Mission briefing
Welcome to Space Academy
Fly past eight planets, watch the Moon change shape, follow a star from birth to black hole, then take the quiz to earn your astronaut badge. 🧑🚀
Start the mission ↓Stop 1
The Eight Planets
Tap a planet to open its file.
Stop 2
Phases of the Moon
The Moon doesn't make its own light. The Sun always lights up half of it, and as the Moon goes around Earth, we see different amounts of that sunny half.
Full Moon
Day 14.8 of 29.5
Earth vs. Moon
The Moon is 27.3% as wide as Earth, and the drawing above is exactly to scale. About 49 Moons could fit inside Earth!
Moon power: tides 🌊
The Moon's gravity pulls on Earth's oceans and makes them bulge. As Earth spins through those bulges, most beaches get two high tides and two low tides every day.
Stop 3
The Life of a Star
Every star starts in a cloud. How it ends depends on how big it is.
Star colors are star thermometers 🌡️
Our galaxy: the Milky Way
The Sun is one of 100 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, a giant spiral galaxy. We live about 26,000 light-years from its center.
What's a light-year?
It's a distance, not a time: how far light goes in one year, which is about 9.46 trillion km. Sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach us.
Final stop
Astronaut Exam
Answer all 10 to earn your badge.