EXPLORING OUR UNIVERSE PLANETS LAUREN KUKLA Checkerboard Library An Imprint of Abdo Publishing abdopublishing com
MISSION PLANETARY EXPLORATION Have you ever looked up at the night sky On a clear night you can see thousands of lights Most of these lights are stars But if you're lucky you might see a planet Planets are often bigger and brighter than stars Our Home Planet If you wanted to visit a planet you wouldn't need to travel very far In fact you wouldn't need to travel at all Earth is the planet we live on It is also the only known planet that can support life Visiting Venus Other planets are far away Venus is usually the closest planet to Earth In 2005 it took the Venus Express spacecraft five months to reach Venus from Earth
In this photograph the two brightest lights are the planets Jupiter left and Venus right They are much brighter than the stars around them A Long Long Trip It would take a long time to visit a planet outside our solar system There our nearest known planet orbits the star Alpha Centauri B It would take more than 60 000 years to reach this planet in our fastest spacecraft
