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.
Two Mercury-bound spacecraft left their mother ship behind on Thursday and headed down the home stretch of their nearly decade-long voyage to the solar system's smallest and closest-to-the-sun planet.
Recent observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have revealed a giant, evolving, 10-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn's south pole. This discovery marks the first time a large, regular-sided jet pattern has ...
Astronomers at Lund University in Sweden have found evidence of exocomets—comets in other solar systems—orbiting a young star similar to our sun. The observations point to a possible mechanism for how water might be transported ...
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 ...
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 ...
When exploring solar system bodies for signs of past or present life, scientists have mainly focused on planets that have (or had) a liquid surface similar to Earth's. However, mounting evidence suggests that the ingredients ...
Some of the strangest weather in the solar system doesn't happen on Earth or even in Jupiter's Great Red Spot—it happens in the interiors of ice giants like Neptune and Uranus. Specifically, scientists have long believed ...
The evolutionary histories of Earth and Mercury differ fundamentally. The smallest planet, closest to the sun, likely began cooling early on, much like a setting pudding: As early as about 1 billion years after its formation, ...
On Sunday, Aug. 30, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is expected to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The observatory will join the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, and the James Webb Space ...
