Some of the Moon has actually been lost. NASA has gifted and loaned out hundreds of Moon rocks collected during the Apollo program. A 2011 report said 517 of these samples had been lost or misplaced. Many (but not all) have since been found. (via Planetary Society)

In space, it would be better to drink a martini than a can of soda. Burping doesn't really work in microgravity, so carbonated drinks can cause major discomfort. With alcohol banned on the International Space Station, it's probably best to stick to water. (via Planetary Society)

"Ring of Fire" eclipses (annular) are the rarest kind of solar eclipse. They only happen when the Sun, Moon, and Earth line up (syzygy) and the moon is close to its farthest point from Earth (apogee).

Some moons didn’t start off as moons. Saturn’s Phoebe and Neptune’s Triton are both thought to have originated as Kuiper Belt Objects. Their orbits were likely disrupted, sending them into the inner Solar System to be captured by large planets’ gravity. (via Planetary Society)

A star can come back from the dead if it steals the life force from another. In some very rare cases, a white dwarf (a dead star) will suck in material from a nearby star, getting massive enough to reignite. In other words, there are zombie vampire stars. (via Planetary Society)

Perseverance has roved over 21 kilometers (13 miles) since it landed on Mars in 2021. But if there were a contest for long distance travel on another world, the champion would be Opportunity, which covered over 45 kilometers (28 miles) between 2004 and 2018. (via Planetary Society)

Pairs of touching asteroids — called contact binaries — are thought to be common in the Solar System. But those observed in orbit around asteroid Dinkinesh are among the first seen up-close and are the only ones ever observed orbiting another asteroid. (via Planetary Society)

In 3.5 years, The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 completed 18,000 orbits of the Earth and journeyed about 8 million kilometers (5 million miles) in total. (via Planetary Society)

Many planetary missions have given humanity much more than we asked for. NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover, for example, was designed for a 90-day mission but operated for over 14 years before communication was lost in 2018. (via Planetary Society)

The Parker Solar Probe set a record this year for the highest speed reached by any human-made object. Its peak speed was 176 kilometers per second (more than 39,000 miles per hour, or 0.06 percent the speed of light) relative to the Sun. (via Planetary Society)

Venus has over 80,000 volcanoes on its surface, more than any other world in the Solar System. New analysis of radar images from NASA's Magellan mission, which orbited Venus from 1990 to 1994, suggests that some Venusian volcanoes may still be active today.

Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas likely came from the Oort Cloud, a group of extremely distant icy bodies that form a sphere around the Solar System. While comets from this area sometimes approach Earth, no object has ever been observed directly in the Oort Cloud.

Comets are simultaneously tiny and huge. The body of the average comet is only a few kilometres/miles across or smaller, but comet ion tails can extend to over 100 million kilometers (62 million miles)—sometimes even stretching farther than the distance between Earth and the Sun.

On the Moon, tracks from rovers or astronauts could last for millions of years because of the lack of wind on the atmosphere-less body. But on Mars, winds are common. Within months, tracks left by rovers will likely be erased. Planetary Society

Earth is slowly shrinking. Every year, our planet gains about 45,000 metric tons of mass from meteorites and dust that falls to the surface. At the same time, Earth loses about 100,000 tons of mass through the escape of atmospheric gases. We're on a diet! :)

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