After an eight-year journey, a spacecraft carrying European and Japanese probes began the monthslong, high-risk approach to Mercury on Thursday to study the sun-scorched planet.
Planetary Sciences
Sep 5, 2026
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Venus is one of the solar system's most unusual planets. It may sometimes be called "Earth's twin" because of its similar size and density, but it rotates on its axis in the opposite direction of most planets, has surface ...
More than 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) from Earth, an ancient icy object is slowly awakening. As it drifts inward through the solar system, the frozen body known as Centaur 450P/LONEOS has begun releasing gas ...
Planetary Sciences
Sep 1, 2026
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What's so special about spotting Phobos crossing in front of the sun? Sure. It's just another image of Phobos crossing the disk of the sun, as seen from the surface of Mars. Like so much of the modern space era, these images, ...
Planetary Sciences
Sep 1, 2026
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Jupiter hosts more than 100 moons, with most attention focused on the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. This is primarily due to their active geology, including Io being the most volcanically active ...
Space Exploration
Aug 31, 2026
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The moon's getting its first airport, and it's about to get busy. Within the next two decades, NASA's planned Gateway—humanity's first lunar spaceport—may become a bustling hub for Orion crew capsules, lunar landers, cargo ...
Space Exploration
Aug 25, 2026
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55
To date, close to 30,000 satellites have been launched into Earth's orbit, leading to mounting concerns over the debris created when they collide. In a new analysis posted to the preprint server arXiv, Hugh Lewis of the University ...
In the sweeping shadow of a satellite dish, staff at the Chilbolton Observatory in southern England track a growing number of objects in Earth's orbit, providing data that underpins Britain's space monitoring efforts.
Space Exploration
Aug 7, 2026
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We have known for a while that the Milky Way is full of homeless worlds. Rogue planets, free-floating planets—call them what you like—but they are planets formed in orderly systems around ordinary stars and then thrown out, ...
Astronomy
Aug 3, 2026
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55
Cislunar space has become the focal point of considerable interest and strategic planning because of the many proposed missions to send crews to the moon in the next decade. These include NASA's Artemis program, China and ...
Space Exploration
Jul 30, 2026
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