Planetary sciences is an interdisciplinary field that investigates the formation, evolution, and current state of planets, moons, and smaller bodies within and beyond our Solar System using the methods of physics, chemistry, geology, and atmospheric science. It encompasses studies of planetary interiors, surfaces, atmospheres, magnetospheres, and ring systems, as well as orbital dynamics and interactions with stellar radiation and plasma environments. Planetary sciences integrates remote sensing, in situ spacecraft measurements, laboratory experiments, and numerical modeling to constrain processes such as accretion, differentiation, tectonism, volcanism, impact cratering, climate evolution, and potential habitability on diverse planetary bodies.
The worlds of the solar system are exciting and, so far, mostly pristine places for planetary scientists to study. As space missions continue to travel to Mars, Europa, asteroids and other worlds, questions arise about keeping ...
Astronomy
Jul 24, 2026
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Dreams of finding a sort of Earth 2.0 motivate much of the thinking around the search for exoplanets. But there is more to exoplanet science than searching for potentially habitable worlds. Scientists need a deeper understanding ...
Astrobiology
Jul 21, 2026
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St. Louis is a plant science powerhouse, but outside the neatly tended rows of crops and gleaming greenhouses sits another treasure trove of biological data: The wild plants tucked into yards, sidewalk cracks, ditches and ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 20, 2026
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The spacecraft aced its encounter with Mars. Now, mission scientists are studying a trove of data from the flyby in preparation for its arrival at asteroid Psyche in 2029.
Planetary Sciences
Jul 18, 2026
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After decades of analyzing reams of lunar rocks back here on Earth, the canonical view of the moon was that it was anhydrous; that it had extraordinarily little water. That all began to change in 2009 with new data from NASA's ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 13, 2026
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This close-up view shows fragments of sulfur crystals, the first ever seen on the Red Planet.
Planetary Sciences
Jul 9, 2026
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A new Southwest Research Institute-led study compared eight AI-generated lunar crater catalogs, discovering that many of their published performance metrics drop sharply when the databases are evaluated using the same scientific ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 6, 2026
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Rare images taken by a Japanese space probe during a flyby of a near-Earth asteroid have revealed that the space rock resembled a snowman, scientists said Monday.
Space Exploration
Jul 6, 2026
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A Japanese space probe performed a flyby of a near-Earth asteroid on Sunday in a test mission for technology that could help protect the planet from space rocks.
Space Exploration
Jul 5, 2026
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254
Saturn's moon Enceladus has become a prime solar system target for astrobiologists. This is because the small moon, which is just over 10% the diameter of Earth's moon, harbors a vast subsurface ocean beneath its icy crust. ...
Space Exploration
Jul 1, 2026
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