Planetary Science

  1. Planetary Science

    Protecting Earth: Gravitational tractor could lure asteroids off course

    Relying solely on the tug of gravity, a proposed spacecraft could divert an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

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  2. Planetary Science

    New Partners: Hubble finds more moons around Pluto

    Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have spied two tiny moons orbiting Pluto, giving this planet a total of three satellites.

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  3. Planetary Science

    Shoreline for Titan?

    New radar images of Saturn's smog-shrouded moon Titan show evidence of a shoreline cutting across the moon's southern hemisphere.

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  4. Planetary Science

    ’10th planet’ has a partner

    The so-called 10th planet, an object larger than Pluto that ranks as the most distant body known in the solar system, has a moon.

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  5. Planetary Science

    Mining the moon

    New ultraviolet images of the moon help identify the presence of ilmenite, a titanium oxide whose elemental constituents may be a valuable resource for sustaining humans as they explore the lunar surface.

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  6. Planetary Science

    Mission to the outer limits

    NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has taken up temporary residence at the Kennedy Space Center, where engineers are doing final testing before the craft begins its 9-year voyage to the outer solar system.

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  7. Planetary Science

    Saturnian sponge

    The first close-up portrait of Saturn's icy moon Hyperion reveals a spongy-looking surface unlike that of any other known moon.

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  8. Planetary Science

    What whacked the inner solar system?

    Planetary scientists have determined that the cavalcade of space debris that hammered the inner solar system for the first 700 million years of its existence were main-belt asteroids, not comets.

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  9. Planetary Science

    Sun grazers: A thousand comets and counting

    An amateur astronomer analyzing images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory has found the 999th and 1,000th comets detected by the craft.

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  10. Planetary Science

    Fresh Mars: Craft views new gullies, craters, and landslides

    A comparison of images taken just a few years apart by a Mars orbiting spacecraft reveals recent landslides, freshly carved gullies, and a 20-meter-wide crater gouged in the planet's surface no earlier than 25 years ago.

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  11. Planetary Science

    Icy world found inside asteroid

    New observations of Ceres, the largest known asteroid, hint that frozen water may account for as much as 25 percent of its interior.

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  12. Planetary Science

    Top of the Martian hill

    After a 14-month climb up a Martian hill, NASA's rover Spirit took a panoramic image of the view from the top.

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