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.
More than 50 years after humans first flew around the moon, Artemis astronauts will repeat the feat on Monday and use the most basic instrument to study it: their eyes.
Space Exploration
Apr 5, 2026
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NASA is joining international partners to hunt for ice on the moon in support of future human exploration. The agency is providing a water-detecting instrument, the Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS), to the Lunar Polar Exploration ...
Space Exploration
Apr 4, 2026
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The interiors of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune could be home to a previously unknown state of matter, according to new computational simulations by Carnegie's Cong Liu and Ronald Cohen. Their work, published in ...
Planetary Sciences
Apr 3, 2026
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The planet Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, and also the most difficult for spacecraft to visit and explore. This is because as spacecraft get closer to Mercury, the sun's enormous gravity pulls in the spacecraft, ...
Planetary Sciences
Apr 1, 2026
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Artemis II, NASA's first crewed mission to the moon in more than 50 years, represents a shift from short visits toward sustained exploration, where understanding lunar geology and resources becomes as important as the engineering ...
Space Exploration
Apr 1, 2026
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The ice giant Uranus is one of the most fascinating objects in the solar system, with its sideways rotation, intricate ring system, and unique family of moons. However, it is also one of the least explored objects in the ...
Planetary Sciences
Mar 31, 2026
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Less than two days from now, NASA's Artemis II mission is scheduled to lift off for its historic 10-day journey around the moon, marking the first time humans have ventured beyond Low Earth Orbit for the first time since ...
Space Exploration
Mar 31, 2026
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In September 2022, humanity crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid—on purpose. The objective of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was to see if we could intentionally modify the orbit of Dimorphos, the small moonlet ...
Space Exploration
Mar 30, 2026
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New observations by a team of US astronomers have cast fresh doubt on whether the lunar surface could host abundant water ice. Publishing their results in Science Advances, a team led by Shuai Li at the University of Hawaii ...
NASA's Artemis II mission plans to fly around the moon and back this April. Four astronauts will board the mammoth Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for the test flight, spending 10 days off-Earth. They won't be touching down—this ...
Space Exploration
Mar 19, 2026
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