The solar system—our Sun’s system of planets, moons, and smaller debris—is humankind’s cosmic backyard. Small by factors of millions compared to interstellar distances, the spaces between the planets ...

NASA has announced an updated plan to continue New Horizons’ mission of exploration of the outer solar system. Beginning in fiscal year 2025, New Horizons will focus on gathering unique heliophysics ...

John Casani spent more than half a century turning speculative ideas about distant worlds into working spacecraft that could ...

Missions to the outer planets are an important and exciting part of NASA’s goals because these scarcely visited worlds, particularly the ice giants Neptune and Uranus, undoubtedly hold secrets about ...

A near term laser ablation of micropellets can be made to rapidly accelerate one ton space probes to reach Pluto in one year. The NASA New Horizons launched in 2006 took 9.5 years to reach Pluto and ...

Introduction: NASA's solar system exploration paradigm : the first fifty years and a look at the next fifty / James L. Green and Kristen J. Erickson -- Part I. Overview. Exploring the Solar System : ...

Nearly 70 years after the launch of the first satellite, we still have more questions than answers about space. But a team of Berkeley researchers is on a mission to change this with a proposal to ...

Eleven objects found at the extremities of the solar system could mark the location of a 'Kuiper Belt 2.' When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how ...

Pt. 1. The golden age, 1957-1982. The beginning -- Of landers and orbiters -- The grandest tour -- Pt. 2. Hiatus and renewal, 1983-1996. The decade of Halley -- The era of flagships -- Faster, cheaper ...

Scientists studying the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua have proposed that it may be a fragment from a Pluto-like planet beyond ...