Space Travel

​Our next blog post is about space travel. The first man walked on the moon in 1968, but now engineers are designing rockets which will send astronauts to Mars.

Space Travel

Kid's Box Reports

Match

Match the following:

tourist

business person

Earth

engineer

rocket

• tourist

• business person

• Earth

• engineer

• rocket

The most important space agencies in the world are NASA (in the USA), ESA (in Europe), and the Russian, Chinese, and Indian space programmes. They build rockets and teach astronauts how to fly them. Rockets take a long time to build and cost a lot of money, so they’re too expensive to use as normal transport.

Multiple Choice

Where are the five most famous space agencies?

• NASA (USA), ESA (Europe), and the Russian, Chinese, and Indian space programmes.

• NASA, ESA, Canadian, Chinese, and Russian space programmes

Multiple Choice

Name two problems with rockets.

• They are too small and cannot fly far
  

• They are not safe and cannot carry astronauts
  

• They take a long time to build and cost a lot of money.

• They cannot reach space and are too slow
  

Multiple Choice

Who flies rockets?

• Scientists

• Tourists

• Astronauts

• Businessmen

A new space programme called Artemis is planning different kinds of missions which will help us to explore space. Some of these missions will take people to the moon and to Mars. The astronauts on these missions live on a giant space station called the Gateway, which will stay in space for more than ten years. On the Gateway, astronauts make and recycle air and water so they can live in space for a long time.

​

Multiple Choice

What will astronauts do while they live on the Gateway?

• Explore new planets and collect moon rocks

• Make and recycle air and water to live in space for a long time

• Train new astronauts and build new rockets

Some businessmen are helping space agencies to build better and cheaper rockets because they are interested in space travel, and they want to send tourists into space and to the moon. Space tourists are people who are not astronauts, but want to visit space. It’s a very expensive adventure! In 2021, a Japanese billionaire businessman paid nearly $35 million to stay on the International Space Station for 12 days. He is called an ‘orbital space tourist’ because he travelled around the Earth.

Multiple Choice

What are businessmen helping space agencies to do?

• Build bigger spaceships

• Build better and cheaper rockets

• Send more tourists to space for free

• Create space colonies

Multiple Choice

How much did it cost the businessman to travel round Earth?

• $50 million

• Nearly $35 million

• $100 million

‘Sub-orbital space tourists’ can go to see Earth from above, but they don’t orbit it. They fly higher than 100 km above Earth, which is where space starts, and for about five minutes they float inside the spaceship. One day, ‘lunar tourists’ will travel outside Earth’s orbit. They'll travel to the moon, and in the future they'll be able to go to Mars, too.

Multiple Choice

How far from Earth is space?

• 50 km above Earth

• 100 km above Earth

• 200 km above Earth

• 500 km above Earth

Multiple Choice

Where will space tourists travel in the future?

• To other galaxies

• They will travel to the moon and eventually to Mars.

• To the sun and stars