Planetary Science
- Planetary Science
Opportunity rolls out of Purgatory
After being stuck for nearly 5 weeks, the Mars rover Opportunity has freed itself from a sand trap on the Red Planet.
- Planetary Science
Planet Hunt Strikes Rock: Hot kin of Earth orbits nearby star
Astronomers have found the closest known cousin to Earth, a solid world just 15 light-years beyond the solar system.
- Planetary Science
Renegade moon
Saturn's outlier moon Phoebe didn't coalesce from material near the ringed planet but was captured from the distant Kuiper belt.
- Planetary Science
High Anxiety: Sudden solar flare highlights space risks
Measurements of energetic particles from an unusually strong solar flare that pummeled Earth early this year suggest that astronauts traveling or working in space might sometimes need to reach shelter within minutes of a warning.
- Planetary Science
Mars Polar Lander: Lost but now found?
A reanalysis of an image taken 5 years ago suggests that planetary scientists have found the remains of the Mars Polar Lander, which vanished minutes before it was supposed to touch down on the Red Planet.
- Planetary Science
Craft show
The Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft recently imaged Mars Odyssey and Mars Express, marking the first time that a spacecraft orbiting a planet other than Earth has captured images of other craft circling the same planet.
- Planetary Science
Roaming Giants: Did migrating planets shape the solar system?
New simulations suggest that the solar system's four biggest planets were once bunched together, setting up a planetary bowling game that rapidly and violently rearranged the structure of the outer solar system and tossed chunks of debris inward.
- Planetary Science
Ringing in a new moon
The Cassini spacecraft has spotted a new moon of Saturn, only the second known to lie within the planet's main rings.
- Planetary Science
Roving on the Red Planet
Scientists review the discoveries made by the Mars rovers after nearly 18 months on the Red Planet.
- Planetary Science
Saturnian moonscape
Planetary scientists have obtained their closest image yet of Epimetheus, one of Saturn's tiny moons.
- Planetary Science
Far-out science
New measurements show that the planetoid Sedna spins more rapidly than earlier observations had suggested.
- Planetary Science
The Huygens Chronicles
After several months of painstaking work analyzing data from the Huygens probe, planetary scientists are able to see the surface of Saturn's moon Titan in greater detail than ever before.
