Solar System Word Search Free Printable With Moons and Missions

A planet word search and more: eight planets, their moons and the missions, with a fresh grid on every press.

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Solar System Word Search

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 16 words found

TEYBFAFOLLHRGHE

HMOONLTCRBRZNEO

GRAVITYLZOPAOIT

NEREVOLUTIONAOT

HUPFHLOYNEPTUNE

NLICOMETNNLJNCN

GSLTZEGERRUUENR

METEOROIDVTPILG

RAXISCHHRNOIHBH

PSLSMUUTILTTGOH

OOODERONNBOEKSE

ENCBIYILGIOREHS

OLWDATMOSPHEREF

SCOXAFPLANETSPE

NMMELASTEROIDJJ

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

MercuryMERCURY
JupiterJUPITER
NeptuneNEPTUNE
PlanetPLANET
RingsRINGS
MoonMOON
PlutoPLUTO
AsteroidASTEROID
CometCOMET
MeteoroidMETEOROID
GravityGRAVITY
RevolutionREVOLUTION
AxisAXIS
TiltTILT
SeasonSEASON
AtmosphereATMOSPHERE

16 of 24 words from the Solar System Key Terms list.

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Answer key: Solar System Word Search

TEYBFAFOLLHRGHE

HMOONLTCRBRZNEO

GRAVITYLZOPAOIT

NEREVOLUTIONAOT

HUPFHLOYNEPTUNE

NLICOMETNNLJNCN

GSLTZEGERRUUENR

METEOROIDVTPILG

RAXISCHHRNOIHBH

PSLSMUUTILTTGOH

OOODERONNBOEKSE

ENCBIYILGIOREHS

OLWDATMOSPHEREF

SCOXAFPLANETSPE

NMMELASTEROIDJJ

MERCURY, JUPITER, NEPTUNE, PLANET, RINGS, MOON, PLUTO, ASTEROID, COMET, METEOROID, GRAVITY, REVOLUTION, AXIS, TILT, SEASON, ATMOSPHERE

Next step Make a puzzle from your own planet vocabulary Scramble the same solar system words

All 128 words

The Eight Planets 19

Earth The third planet, our home. Its axis leans about 23.4 degrees, which gives us seasons.
Gas giant Jupiter or Saturn: a huge world made mostly of hydrogen and helium, with no solid ground.
Great Red Spot A giant oval storm on Jupiter, first recorded in September 1831 and still turning.
Ice giant Uranus or Neptune: a big cold world made mostly of water, ammonia and methane.
Inner The word for the four small, rocky worlds closest to the Sun.
Jupiter The fifth planet. It spins faster than any other, once in just under 10 hours.
Mars The fourth planet, a cold red world with giant dead volcanoes and a canyon 4,000 kilometers long.
Mercury Planet number one from the Sun. It has no moon, and one sunrise to the next takes 176 Earth days.
Morning star An old name for Venus when it shines in the east before sunrise.
Neptune The eighth planet. Math predicted where it would be, and a telescope found it there in 1846.
Olympus Mons A volcano on Mars about 22 kilometers tall, the highest point on that world.
Outer The word for the four giant worlds that lie beyond the asteroid belt.

Show all 128 words (116 more)

The Eight Planets, continued

Planet A round body that circles the Sun and has cleared its path of other objects. There are eight.
Rings Bands of ice, rock and dust circling a world. All four giants have them. Saturn's are brightest.
Rocky Made mostly of stone and metal, like the four worlds nearest the Sun.
Saturn The sixth planet, and the only one less dense than water.
Terrestrial The science word for an Earth-like world with a solid surface, from terra, Latin for Earth.
Uranus The seventh planet. Nobody knew it was a planet until William Herschel studied it in 1781.
Venus The second planet. It spins backwards compared with most planets, once in about 243 Earth days.

Moons of the Solar System 22

Ariel Uranus's fourth largest moon.
Callisto A moon of Jupiter whose ancient surface is almost completely covered with craters.
Charon The largest moon of Pluto. It is half as wide as Pluto itself.
Deimos The smaller, outer moon of Mars.
Dione An icy moon of Saturn that Giovanni Cassini discovered in March 1684.
Enceladus A small moon of Saturn that shoots jets of water vapor and ice from cracks near its south pole.
Europa A moon of Jupiter with a very smooth shell of ice and an ocean of water beneath it.
Galilean The name shared by Jupiter's four big moons, first seen through a telescope in 1610.
Ganymede A moon of Jupiter, the solar system's largest moon. It is bigger than Mercury.
Iapetus A two-tone moon of Saturn: one half is dark and the other is bright.
Lunar The adjective for Earth's natural satellite, from luna, its Latin name.
Maria The dark plains we see on Earth's satellite, made by ancient lava. The word is Latin for seas.
Mimas A moon of Saturn with one giant crater almost a third as wide as the moon itself.
Miranda A small moon of Uranus, found in 1948 and named after a character in Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Moon Earth's one natural satellite. It always keeps the same face turned toward us.
Oberon The outermost of the five major moons of Uranus, and the second largest.
Phobos The bigger of Mars's two moons, found in August 1877. Its Greek name means fear.
Regolith The loose layer of dust and broken rock that covers solid bedrock on the Moon and Mars.
Rhea Saturn's second largest moon.
Titan Saturn's largest moon, the only moon with a dense atmosphere. It has lakes of liquid methane.
Triton Neptune's largest moon. It circles backwards, against the planet's spin.
Umbriel The moon of Uranus with the darkest surface.

Dwarf Planets, Asteroids and Comets 23

Asteroid A rocky or metal body much smaller than a planet. The name comes from the Greek for star-like.
Bennu A small asteroid. A spacecraft scooped up a sample in October 2020 and landed it on Earth in 2023.
Ceres Found on January 1, 1801. It is the only dwarf planet whose whole path lies inside Neptune's.
Coma The fuzzy cloud of gas and dust that forms around a comet's solid heart as it warms.
Comet A lump of ice and dust on a long looping path. Near the Sun it grows a fuzzy head and a tail.
Dwarf planet A round world that circles the Sun but has not cleared its path. Pluto is the best known.
Eris A far-off dwarf planet discovered in January 2005 and named after a Greek goddess of strife.
Eros The site of the first landing on an asteroid, made by a spacecraft that studied it up to 2001.
Fireball An unusually bright shooting star, the streak of a space rock burning up in the air.
Haumea A stretched dwarf planet beyond Neptune that spins once in about 3.9 hours.
Ice Frozen water. Comets, Saturn's rings and many moons are full of it.
Ida The first asteroid found to have a little moon of its own.
Kuiper belt A zone of icy bodies beyond Neptune, from about 30 to 50 times Earth's distance from the Sun.
Main belt The zone between Mars and Jupiter where most known asteroids travel.
Makemake A dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, named after a god of the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island.
Meteor shower A night of many shooting stars, seen when Earth crosses the dusty trail of a comet.
Meteoroid A small body drifting in space, from the size of a grain up to about one meter wide.
Nucleus The solid heart of a comet, a lump of ice, dust and rock.
Oort cloud A vast, far-off shell of icy bodies thought to surround the Sun. Long-period comets come from it.
Pluto Found in February 1930. A bright region nicknamed the heart marks its surface.
Tail The streak of gas or dust that streams from a comet. It points away from the Sun.
Trojan An asteroid that shares a planet's path, keeping ahead of it or behind it. Most follow Jupiter.
Vesta The brightest asteroid seen from Earth and the second largest, after Ceres.

Orbits, Days and Seasons 23

Aphelion The point on a planet's path where it is farthest from the Sun. Earth reaches it in early July.
Autumn In the north it begins at the September equinox. Americans often call it fall.
Axis The imaginary line through a planet from top to bottom, around which it spins.
Day The time a planet takes to spin once. On Earth it is 24 hours. On Jupiter, under 10.
Equator The imaginary line around the middle of a planet, halfway between its poles.
Equinox It comes around March 20 and September 23, with sunrise due east and sunset due west.
Gravity The pull that keeps planets circling the Sun and moons circling planets.
Hemisphere Half of a planet. When the northern one has summer, the southern one has winter.
Night The dark hours on the side of a planet that faces away from the Sun.
Noon The middle of the daytime, when the Sun is highest in the sky and shadows are shortest.
Orbit The path a planet follows around the Sun, or a moon around a planet.
Perihelion The point on a planet's path at which it comes nearest the Sun. Earth reaches it in early January.
Pole Either end of a planet's axis. Earth has a north one and a south one.
Revolution One full trip by a planet around the Sun. For Earth it takes one year.
Rotation The spin of a planet on its axis. One full turn makes one day.
Season One of four parts of the year, caused by Earth's lean and not by its distance from the Sun.
Solstice It comes twice a year, around June 21 and December 21: the longest or the shortest day.
Spring In the northern half of the world it begins at the March equinox.
Summer The months when your half of Earth leans toward the Sun and daylight lasts longest.
Sun The star in the middle. It holds 99.86 percent of the mass of the whole solar system.
Tilt The lean of a planet's axis. Uranus leans so far that it spins on its side.
Winter The months when your half of Earth leans away from the Sun and daylight is shortest.
Year The time a planet takes to circle the Sun once: 88 Earth days for Mercury, about 60,000 for Neptune.

Surfaces and Atmospheres 19

Ammonia A sharp-smelling gas. Frozen crystals of it make the clouds that always cover Jupiter.
Atmosphere The layer of gases around a planet or moon. Venus has a crushing one. Mercury has almost none.
Basin A huge hollow blasted out by an ancient impact. Caloris on Mercury is 1,550 kilometers across.
Canyon A deep valley with steep sides. One on Mars runs for about 4,000 kilometers.
Carbon dioxide The gas that makes up 96.5 percent of the air on Venus and 95 percent on Mars.
Core The hot center of a planet or moon.
Crust The thin, solid outer shell of a rocky planet.
Greenhouse The effect that traps heat under thick air. It keeps Venus at about 464 degrees Celsius.
Helium The second lightest element. Jupiter and Saturn are mostly hydrogen and this gas.
Iron A metal found deep inside the rocky planets. Rusted, it colors the dust of Mars red.
Lava Molten rock that has reached the surface. It once flooded the dark plains of Earth's satellite.
Magnetosphere The region around a planet ruled by its magnetic field. Jupiter's is bigger than any other planet's.
Mantle The thick layer between the center of a rocky planet and its thin outer shell.
Methane A gas that helps make Neptune look blue. On Titan it fills lakes.
Nitrogen The main gas in Earth's air. Frozen, it fills the bright plain on Pluto.
Ocean A vast body of salt water. Earth's covers about 71 percent of the planet.
Polar cap A sheet of ice covering the top or bottom of a planet. Earth and Mars both have them.
Storm Violent weather. Winds on Saturn can reach 1,800 kilometers an hour.
Volcano An opening where molten rock escapes. Jupiter's moon Io has over 400 active ones.

Solar System Missions 22

Cassini The spacecraft that circled Saturn from July 2004 to September 2017.
Curiosity The rover that landed in Gale crater on Mars in August 2012.
Dawn The first spacecraft to circle two different worlds beyond Earth: Vesta and then Ceres.
Flyby A visit in which a spacecraft speeds past a world without stopping.
Gravity assist A change of speed and direction a spacecraft gets by swinging close past a planet.
Huygens It parachuted onto Titan in January 2005, the farthest landing from Earth ever made.
Ingenuity A small helicopter that first flew on Mars on April 19, 2021, and made its last flight in 2024.
Juno The spacecraft that arrived at Jupiter on July 5, 2016.
Magellan Launched in May 1989, it mapped the hidden surface of Venus with radar.
Mariner The United States program whose craft were first to visit Venus, Mars and Mercury.
Messenger The spacecraft that circled Mercury between 2011 and 2015.
New Horizons The spacecraft that flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015.
Opportunity A Mars rover planned to last 90 Martian days. It kept working for 5,111 of them, until June 2018.
Orbiter A spacecraft that circles a planet or moon to map and study it.
Perseverance The rover that landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, carrying a small helicopter.
Philae The small lander that touched down on a comet on November 12, 2014.
Pioneer The program whose tenth craft, launched in 1972, was the first to visit Jupiter.
Rosetta The European spacecraft that stayed beside a comet from August 2014 to September 2016.
Sojourner The first wheeled vehicle to work on another planet. It landed on Mars on July 4, 1997.
Spacecraft Any vehicle built to travel beyond Earth's air, with or without a crew.
Venera The Soviet program whose seventh craft made the first soft landing on another planet, in 1970.
Viking Two United States spacecraft, each an orbiter with a lander, that reached Mars in 1976.

How this list was compiled: Own work: the word list and every clue were written for this page. The facts in the clues were checked on 2026-09-19 against Wikipedia, among them the article on the solar system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System). Two figures were corrected on 2026-09-20 against https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_%28rover%29 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune. Licence: own work

How it works

This solar system word search free printable starts on 16 of 24 key terms: the planets from Mercury to Neptune, plus Orbit, Tilt and Comet. Eight more lists add moons, dwarf planets and missions, 128 words in all.

Read the full guide

A planet word search, or the whole solar system

For the planets alone, pick The Eight Planets in the Start from a list row under the puzzle: 19 words, from Mercury to Olympus Mons. Moons of the Solar System (22) runs from Phobos to Charon. Dwarf Planets, Asteroids and Comets (23) holds Pluto, Ceres and the Kuiper belt, Orbits, Days and Seasons (23) fits the lesson on why seasons happen, and Solar System Missions (22) goes from Mariner to Perseverance.

Solar system word search PDF

The PDF comes from the same button as the paper copy. Both are 2 pages on Letter or A4, puzzle first and answer key second.

Sun is not a key term: it reads backwards inside Venus and Uranus. Find it in Orbits, Days and Seasons.
Kuiper belt, Great Red Spot and 12 more entries with a space are hidden as one run: KUIPERBELT.
Moon counts are left out of the clues on purpose: new discoveries keep changing them.

Questions and answers

Why are there eight planets, and where is Pluto?

The International Astronomical Union defined a planet in August 2006, and eight bodies fit. Pluto is a dwarf planet: round, but sharing its path with other objects. Find it with Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake in the dwarf planets list.

Which list suits younger pupils?

Easy Solar System: 44 words of 3 to 5 letters, such as Mars, Moon, Rings and Comet. Take words off the list with their crosses until 8 or 12 are left. Hard Solar System, 26 words of 9 to 13 letters, is for the oldest.

How long did the Opportunity rover last on Mars?

It was planned for 90 Martian days and kept working for 5,111, until June 2018. Opportunity is in Solar System Missions with Sojourner and Curiosity. Tick Show clues, not words, in More options, and pupils find each rover from its story.

All 128 words

The Eight Planets 19

The Eight Planets, continued

Moons of the Solar System 22

Dwarf Planets, Asteroids and Comets 23

Orbits, Days and Seasons 23

Surfaces and Atmospheres 19

Solar System Missions 22

How it works

A planet word search, or the whole solar system

Solar system word search PDF

Questions and answers

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