Astro Explorer

An Astroshort app

Start at a black hole. Fly all the way home.

A hand-built universe.
Honestly told.

Fly between planets, drill into real places on Earth, Mars and the Moon, and hear every fact read aloud — each one sourced from NASA. Runs offline. Never shows an ad, never asks who you are.

Download on the App Store

Free on the App Store — no ads, no accounts, works offline.

Works offline No ads No accounts No tracking Reads aloud Free
The whole solar system — the Sun, the planets and their orbits against the Milky Way, each world labelled.
Jezero Crater on Mars — its observation plate showing the NASA image of the ancient river delta, with a plainly-told fact beneath.
Earth with the northern lights glowing at its pole, the Moon behind, and a field note explaining the aurora.

Real screens from the app — no mock-ups. New captures coming with the next update.

What's new · July 2026

AstroShort 1.0 is live — and the next free update is already with Apple.

Out now — 1.0

The full hand-built solar system: fly between worlds, drill into real places on Earth, Mars and the Moon, and hear every fact read aloud. Free, offline, no ads, no accounts.

In review — science shows

Hawking radiation, dark energy and dark matter — told honestly, with progress points, sources, and a plain red stamp on anything that's still a prediction.

In review — Field Guide quests

Little missions that guide the exploring: find, compare and discover — with a winner's stamp at the end. Arrives automatically the moment Apple approves.

Why people trust it

Private by design. Honest by rule.

Works on a plane

The whole solar system runs offline. No wifi, no signal — no problem.

No ads, ever

Nothing is sold, and nobody is buying your attention.

No accounts

Open it and explore. No email, no sign-up, no profiles to manage.

Nothing is tracked

Zero analytics, zero telemetry. Their exploring stays on the device.

Reads itself aloud

A warm voice narrates every world, so a pre-reader can explore alone.

Free

The whole universe, free. No unlocks, no subscriptions, no catch.

The single exception to “nothing leaves the device”: an optional daily discovery feed of real rocket launches and Earth events, fetched with a plain, anonymous request — no cookies, no identifiers. Turn it off and the app is fully offline. Read the two-minute privacy policy.

The narrator

Every world, read aloud.

Tap a world and a warm, natural voice says its name and tells you something true — so an explorer who can't read yet never needs a grown-up to keep going. Have a listen:

Recorded from the app — this is the actual voice you'll hear in the app.

A real look inside

From our own star to a real black hole.

Start at the Sun, drift out past the planets and their moons, and don't stop until you reach a real black hole and the galaxies beyond. Every image below is a real screen from the app.

The solar system in the app — the Sun and all eight planets on labelled orbits against the stars.

The solar system

The Sun, all eight planets and their moons — tap any world and fly straight to it.

Saturn up close in the app — its rings tilted against the stars, with Jupiter, Venus, Titan and the Sun labelled around it.

Planets

Rise up to any planet and open its plate — Saturn's rings, its moons, and the facts that make it strange.

Jupiter's moons in the app — Europa up close, with Jupiter and the other Galilean moons drifting nearby.

Moons

Europa, Titan, our own Moon — dozens of worlds circle the planets, and you can visit them all.

Sagittarius A* in the app — the black hole at the Milky Way's centre, its glowing surroundings, and a field note about its four-million-Sun mass.

The black hole

Sagittarius A*, the giant black hole at our galaxy's heart — with the real Event Horizon Telescope photo on its plate.

The galaxy view in the app — the Milky Way's spiral seen from outside, with Andromeda drifting in the distance.

Galaxies

Keep pulling back until the Sun is a speck, our galaxy's core glows, and Andromeda drifts into view.

An observation plate in the app for Uluru — the rock glowing orange at sunset, over a satellite map of Australia.

Walk into real places

Drill into Earth, Mars and the Moon — Uluru, coral reefs, the Apollo landing sites — each a real place with a real photo and a sourced story.

Plate photograph: Jörn Wellniak (Weyf) · CC0
The Jezero Crater plate — NASA's image of the ancient river delta on Mars, with the fact that long ago this giant bowl was a real lake.

“Long ago this was a real lake”

The ancient river delta at Jezero Crater on Mars, where NASA's Perseverance rover landed — the same image scientists study, told in plain language.

Image: NASA / JPL / JHU-APL / MSSS / Brown University · Public Domain

What makes it good

Made to be explored, not scrolled.

Explore

Fly anywhere by touch

The Sun, all eight planets and the Moon — tap a world and fly to it. Zoom from a planet's surface all the way out to the galaxy.

Navigation never needs reading. A pre-reader can pilot the whole universe alone.

Go inside

Step inside real places

Earth, Mars and the Moon aren't just spheres — drill in to real places: Uluru at sunset, Jezero Crater's ancient river delta, coral reefs, the Apollo landing sites.

Each one carries a real photo and a story you can trust, with the source attached.

It comes alive

Worlds that perform

In Kid mode, planets put on little shows and creatures appear where they really live — the northern lights flare, and a place you've flown to comes alive.

In Explorer mode it all stays calm and premium. Wonder, tuned to the room.

Two modes

Explorer & Kid, one tap apart

Explorer is the default: a clean, engraved star-atlas look where grown-up facts and the daily feed are one tap away.

Kid is a playful picture-book skin for little hands, with the deeper facts tucked safely behind a parent hold-gesture.

Size comparison

Eleven Earths fit across the face of Jupiter.

Put any two worlds side by side and watch the scale finally land — the kind of “wait, what?” moment a picture in a book can't give you. And the Sun? It would swallow 109 Earths across.

Jupiter — equatorial width142,984 km
Earth — equatorial width12,756 km
Side by side≈ 11×

Source — NASA planetary fact sheets

Grounded in real science. Sizes, distances, moons and temperatures come from NASA planetary fact sheets and the IAU, and every fact shows its source. Where we stylize scale so tiny planets stay visible, we say so — but the truths always hold: Jupiter is always the biggest, Mercury always closest to the Sun. Spot something off? Tell us, and we'll fix it.

Curiosity · Connection · Learning

This isn't a studio's app — it's a universe built in the open. The best worlds and places here come from what explorers ask for next.

Shaped by the people who explore it.

Built together

Your ideas become real features.

Astro Explorer grows in the open. The best worlds and places here come from what its explorers ask for next. See something missing? Ask, and watch it arrive.

Speak your idea

Say it out loud — “I want dinosaurs!” Their words become text right there on the device. Nothing is recorded, and no sound ever leaves the phone.

A grown-up sends it

Every idea is reviewed on the device before anything is sent — nothing leaves without an explicit tap.

The best ones ship

Popular ideas get built and arrive as free updates, often within days. You asked; it shows up — the thing you wished for, turning real.

A wish on the board
“I want dinosaurs!”

Every idea joins the Builders Board — a shared wish-list inside the app where explorers everywhere can see what the whole community is curious about. No names, no profiles, no accounts: just wishes, gathered together. A small sense of connection, and the quiet thrill of watching something you asked for get made.

Built for one curious kid.
Grown for every curious mind.

Real science, honestly told, free for everyone — that’s the whole idea.

Download on the App Store

Free on the App Store — no ads, no accounts, works offline.