Planetary Science
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
