Mission: Planet Exploration

Have you wondered what it would be like to travel through our solar system?

What if you could shrink it down to fit in our city of Monrovia? Well, since we can’t all be together for our annual Moon & Stars Family Night this year, we decided to take this opportunity to plan something truly different—a socially distanced, driving tour of our solar system!

We recreated our solar system—to scale!—based upon a 6-foot sun at the front of our school. (We chose 6 feet because that’s the biggest beach ball we could find!) Using a handy tool created by the Exploratorium, we were able to calculate all the planet sizes and distances from Plymouth Elementary based on that 6-foot beach ball. You can try it out yourself!

Our drivable solar system is over 760 million times smaller than the real solar system! So as you drive through Monrovia, imagine that every foot you travel is actually 761,530,000 feet! (When you’re dealing with the solar system, numbers get really big, really fast.)

When you visit each planet, there will be a lawn sign with a QR code you can scan to get more information about that planet. Most cell phone cameras have a built-in QR code reader, so just open up the camera on your phone and point it at the QR code on our sign. (Note: if you’re a little further away, you may need to zoom in a little with your camera on the QR code for it to read.)

Please stay in your cars and be safe and respectful of our wonderful friends who have agreed to host planets on their front lawns. Most of all, have fun, and if you’d like to share pictures of your Mission: Planet Exploration, please post them on our Facebook page and use #plymouthpta #MUSDproud! We’d love to see them!

Click here for a map to Mission: Planet Exploration.

Click here for a more printer-friendly version of the map.

Even though our driving tour is over, you can still access the content for the Sun and each of the planets in our solar system tour here: