Fill a time capsule to leave on Mars for the next visitors. Write what goes in and the note on top.Angle: one thing from Earth, one thing you made there, one question.
Describe a sunspot as a freckle that comes and goes, in the Sun's own voice.Angle: does the Sun like its spots, hide them or count them?
You turn ten on Mars. Write the party, and work out how old that makes you back on Earth.Fact: a year on Mars lasts 687 Earth days.
A calendar maker on Mercury has to fit the whole year on one page. Write her complaint to the printer.Fact: Mercury is the fastest planet and goes around the Sun every 88 Earth days.
Eat lunch outdoors at noon on Neptune and describe the light.Fact: Neptune is so far from the Sun that high noon there would seem like dim twilight to us.
Fly a weather balloon into the Great Red Spot and write its log.Fact: the Great Red Spot is a giant storm bigger than Earth that has raged for hundreds of years.
Hike to the rim of the biggest canyon on Mars and write what you can and cannot see across.Fact: the canyon system Valles Marineris is long enough to stretch from California to New York.
Keep a diary on a planet where one day outlasts the year. The first entry begins: Still today.Fact: a day on Venus is 243 Earth days long, longer than its year of 225 Earth days.
Ride through Saturn's rings in a small ship and write what taps against the hull.Fact: the rings are chunks of ice and rock, from dust-sized grains to chunks as big as a house.
School on a station above Jupiter has to fit into one short day. Write the timetable and what gets squeezed out.Fact: Jupiter has the shortest day in the solar system, about 9.9 hours.
Somebody finds a bathtub big enough for Saturn. Write the news story.Fact: Saturn's average density is less than water; NASA says it could float in a bathtub that big.
Spring on Mars goes on and on. Send a letter home about the longest season you have lived through.Fact: spring in the north of Mars is its longest season, at 194 sols.
Stand on Mercury at noon and describe the Sun to someone who has only seen it from Earth.Fact: from Mercury the Sun would appear more than three times as large as it does from Earth.
Sweep the red dust off a solar panel on Mars and write what you think about while you work.Fact: Mars looks red because the iron in its rocks and dust has rusted.
Write the first sunrise after a winter that lasted twenty-one years.Fact: on Uranus, half the planet at a time is plunged into a 21-year-long dark winter.
Write the travel brochure for Venus, and be honest in the small print.Fact: Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system, with a surface hot enough to melt lead.
Write your first sol on Mars, from waking up to lights out.Fact: a day on Mars is called a sol and lasts 24.6 hours, a little longer than a day on Earth.
You turn ten on Mars. Write the party, and work out how old that makes you back on Earth.Fact: a year on Mars lasts 687 Earth days.
The Sun 15
A captain tries to land a ship on the Sun. Write the log entry that explains why it cannot be done.Fact: the Sun has no solid surface; it is a hot glowing ball of hydrogen and helium.
A comet swings close to the Sun once and heads back out. Write what it tells the others in the cold.Fact: perhaps three trillion comets and icy bodies orbit the Sun.
A detective takes the case: why is the Sun's crown hotter than its face? Write the first page of her notes.Fact: the corona reaches up to 3.5 million °F, far hotter than the 10,000 °F surface.
Describe a sunspot as a freckle that comes and goes, in the Sun's own voice.Angle: does the Sun like its spots, hide them or count them?
Describe the hottest place you can imagine, then explain why the middle of the Sun still wins.Fact: the temperature in the Sun's core is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.
Describe the Sun to someone who lives underground, without the words hot, bright or yellow.Angle: what it does to a morning, a window, a sidewalk.
Interview the Sun on its birthday. Ask what it remembers about the early days.Fact: the Sun is a yellow dwarf star about 4.5 billion years old.
Make a riddle whose answer is the Sun, with one very large number as the clue.Fact: it would take 1.3 million Earths to fill the Sun's volume.
Measure the distance to the Sun in something silly, such as school buses or sandwiches, and write the report.Fact: the Sun is about 93 million miles from Earth.
The planets ask to leave. Write the Sun's speech about why they cannot.Fact: the Sun's gravity holds the solar system together, from the biggest planets to bits of debris.
Two spots on the Sun race each other around it, one at the middle and one near the top. Write the race.Fact: the Sun spins once in 25 Earth days at its equator but takes 36 days at its poles.
Write a thank-you letter to the Sun, signed by everything growing in one garden.Fact: without the Sun's energy, life as we know it could not exist on Earth.
Write one sunrise as it looks from three planets on the same morning.Angle: large and fierce close in, small and pale far out.
Write the caption for a family photo of the solar system, with the Sun as the one everybody stands around.Fact: eight planets, at least five dwarf planets and tens of thousands of asteroids orbit the Sun.
Write the Sun's job description as an ad that no other star answers.Fact: the Sun is our solar system's only star.
A postcard from a moon 15
A small drone hops from place to place across Titan. Write its flight log.Fact: Titan is the only moon in our solar system known to have a substantial atmosphere.
A small robot submarine waits on Europa for the drill to finish. Write its diary.Angle: what does it hope to see first when the ice opens?
Choose any moon and design its postcard in words: the picture on the front, the stamp, and six words on the back.Fact: our solar system has hundreds of moons.
Describe the whitest place in the solar system to a friend who has only seen snow.Fact: Enceladus has the whitest, most reflective surface in the solar system.
Enceladus makes one of Saturn's rings out of its own spray. Write how it feels to make something that big by accident.Fact: its spray of icy particles spreads around its orbit and forms Saturn's E ring.
Ganymede is bigger than a planet. Write the speech it gives at a meeting of all the moons.Fact: Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system, even bigger than the planet Mercury.
Go for a walk in the rain on Titan and write home about it.Fact: Titan has clouds, rain, rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane, not water.
Io is pulled one way by Jupiter and another by its neighbor moons. Write the tug-of-war as Io tells it.Fact: Io is caught in a tug-of-war between Jupiter's gravity and the pulls of Europa and Ganymede.
Phobos and Deimos may once have been asteroids. Write what the two moons say to each other as they circle Mars.Fact: Mars has two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, that may be captured asteroids.
Send a postcard from Europa about what may be under the ice you are standing on.Fact: scientists believe a saltwater ocean lies beneath Europa's icy shell.
Send a postcard from Ganymede to someone who loves the northern lights.Fact: Ganymede is the only moon known to have its own magnetic field, which causes auroras.
Triton goes around Neptune the other way. Write its answer to everyone who asks why.Fact: Triton is the only large moon that orbits in the opposite direction of its planet's rotation.
Write a postcard from Enceladus on the day the jets went off beside your camp.Fact: Enceladus has geyser-like jets that spew water vapor and ice particles into space.
Write a postcard from Io that had to be finished in a hurry.Fact: Io is the most volcanically active world in the solar system, with hundreds of volcanoes.
Write a postcard from Phobos about your lumpy little moon and the planet that fills the sky.Fact: the two moons of Mars are potato-shaped, with too little mass for gravity to make them round.
Pack for the trip 15
Choose one planet to visit and write the argument you make to a friend who chose another.Fact: our solar system has one star and eight planets.
Fill a time capsule to leave on Mars for the next visitors. Write what goes in and the note on top.Angle: one thing from Earth, one thing you made there, one question.
It is the night before you leave for Mars. Write the note you tuck under your own pillow for the day you get back.Angle: what do you hope is the same, and what do you hope is different?
Nobody can land on Jupiter. Write what you pack for a trip where you only look out the window.Fact: as a gas giant, Jupiter does not have a true surface.
One bag is all you get for Mars. Write what goes in first and what you take out last.Fact: Mars is a dusty, cold, desert world with a very thin atmosphere.
Pack for Mercury, where the same trip needs a sun hat and the warmest coat ever made.Fact: on Mercury, days can reach 800°F and nights can dip as low as -290°F.
Pack for the edge of the solar system, past the last planet. Write what you take for the dark.Fact: past Neptune's orbit lies the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy bodies.
Plan the snacks for a trip to Neptune and write how you make them last.Fact: Neptune is more than 30 times as far from the Sun as Earth.
Record ten sounds before you leave Earth, to play on the long trip. Write the list.Angle: which one do you play first, and which do you save?
The ship has room for one photo, one tool and one thing with no use at all. Write which three, and who argued.Angle: the useless thing turns out to matter most. When?
Write a rover's packing list: what a robot takes to Mars, and what it would take if it had the choice.Fact: Mars is the only planet where we have sent rovers to roam the landscape.
Write the packing list for Venus that the travel agent keeps handing back.Fact: air pressure at the surface of Venus is about 93 times what it is at sea level on Earth.
You may bring one thing that reminds you of rain. Write what it is and where you keep it on Mars.Fact: NASA missions have found evidence that Mars was much wetter and warmer billions of years ago.
Your bag for Mars is too heavy by exactly one thing. Write the choosing.Angle: what stays behind on the bed at home?
Your little brother wants to hide in your bag to Saturn. Write how you talk him out of it.Fact: Saturn takes about 29 Earth years to go once around the Sun.
How it works
Each of these solar system writing prompts hands over one fact from NASA before the first sentence: how long a day lasts on Venus, what Saturn's rings are made of. The fact sets the scene. The story is yours.
Read the full guide
A planet writing prompt that starts from a fact
The group A day on another planet goes world by world. On Venus the day outlasts the year, so a diary begins Still today. A school day above Jupiter has to fit in under ten hours. Somebody finds a bathtub big enough for Saturn, and a reporter covers it.
Postcards from moons, and a bag to pack
Fifteen prompts are postcards from the moons of other planets: the ice of Europa, the volcanoes of Io, a walk in the rain on Titan. Fifteen more are about leaving: a bag for Mercury that needs a sun hat and a winter coat, ten sounds recorded before the trip.
Read the fact, then ask what it would do to an ordinary day: lunch, a walk, a birthday.
A postcard is small. Choose the one thing a friend at home could not guess.
Questions and answers
Are there Mars writing prompts on this list?
Yes. Five are days on Mars: a first sol, a tenth birthday, a hike to the canyon rim, dust on a solar panel, the long northern spring. Two are about its small moons, and several packing prompts are bound for Mars.
Is there a writing prompt about the Sun?
Fifteen. Interview the Sun on its birthday. Write a captain's log on why no ship can land on it. Describe it to someone who lives underground, without the words hot, bright or yellow.
How long is a day on Mars?
About 24.6 hours, NASA says, a little longer than a day on Earth. A day there is called a sol, and a year on Mars lasts 687 Earth days.
Where do the facts in these solar system prompts come from?
From NASA's fact pages for the Sun, seven planets and six moons, named under the list. A line that begins Fact says what one of those pages says. A line that begins Angle is a suggestion.