Our solar system is a weird place. Much more than a home to eight planets, it’s filled with a myriad of fascinating other smaller bodies, including moons, asteroids, and comets. In recent decades, ...

Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active place in the solar system. Let me tell you just how volcanic it is.

The decades since scientists confirmed the first planet around another star have been rich in discovery, but it’s rare to see ...

Introduction: NASA's solar system exploration paradigm : the first fifty years and a look at the next fifty / James L. Green and Kristen J. Erickson -- Part I. Overview. Exploring the Solar System : ...

Planetary scientists have long debated where the material that formed Earth comes from. Despite its location in the inner ...

The solar system has many more moons than the one we can see in the sky. But how many do we actually know about? And how many ...

Scientists have long believed that comets and a type of very primitive meteorite called carbonaceous chondrites were the sources of early Earth’s volatile elements — which include hydrogen, nitrogen, ...

Estimating ages of specific events is one of the most difficult problems in astrophysics. While we have a precise (and probably accurate) age for the solar system, we do not have precise ages for each ...

Exoplanet L98-59d, located far beyond our solar system, might not sound like someone’s dream destination. It likely has an ...

Approximately 4.5 billion years ago, a cold cloud of gas and dust buried deep in one of the Milky Way galaxy’s spiral arms started to collapse. From there, gravity worked its magic. The cloud began to ...