{"id":488833,"date":"2026-02-18T22:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T22:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/488833\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T22:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T22:59:10","slug":"space-dreams-meet-planetary-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/488833\/","title":{"rendered":"Space dreams meet planetary facts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"960\" height=\"600\" class=\"picture-main-block-image\" data-nxsrc=\"https:\/\/www.ekathimerini.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/b869156ac43f1f9f3a09f89c85ebae3b_LPR50237-1.jpg\" alt=\"Space dreams meet planetary facts\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/b869156ac43f1f9f3a09f89c85ebae3b_LPR50237-1-960x600.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>At 11 a.m., the foyer of the New Digital Planetarium filled with middle school students, arriving at the day\u2019s peak hour for school visits. Many had grown up on science fiction and a torrent of online images where space travel seems effortless, one click away. \u201cThe first thing they ask about is aliens and space travel,\u201d said Manos Kitsonas, director of the planetarium at the Eugenides Foundation. They are startled to learn that a round trip to the Moon takes a week, to Mars three years and to Saturn 30. Kitsonas laments the removal of astronomy from schools, calling it \u201ca huge mistake.\u201d Basic knowledge of our world and humanity\u2019s place in it, he argues, \u201chelps us become better people and citizens.\u201d Without a sense of scale, children grow up thinking, as in \u201cStar Wars,\u201d \u201cyou can just go wherever you want in the universe.\u201d Humanity, he tells them, is \u201ca fraction of a fraction\u201d in space and time. From afar, Earth\u2019s thin atmosphere reveals life\u2019s fragility \u2013 and our shared home. [Lefteris Partsalis]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 11 a.m., the foyer of the New Digital Planetarium filled with middle school students, arriving at the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,2555,7451,37448,128,285],"class_list":["post-488833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-education","tag-images","tag-multimedia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}