Summaries | Headlines

Cassini Returns Never-before-seen Views Of The Ringed Planet (March 2, 2007) -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured never-before-seen views of Saturn from perspectives high above and below the planet's rings. Over the last several months, the spacecraft has climbed to higher ... > full story

NASA Spacecraft Gets Boost From Jupiter For Pluto Encounter (March 1, 2007) -- NASA's New Horizons spacecraft successfully completed a flyby of Jupiter early this morning (Feb. 28), using the massive planet's gravity to pick up speed for its 3-billion mile voyage to Pluto and ... > full story

Many Moons: Space Scientists Ponder Which Jupiter Moon Will Reveal The Most (February 23, 2007) -- According to William B. McKinnon, professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, the community suffers from an embarrassment of riches, because each of the moons of ... > full story

Jupiter's Moon Europa Should Be NASA's Next Target, Says Researcher (February 22, 2007) -- As NASA develops its next "flagship" mission to the outer solar system, Jupiter's enigmatic moon Europa should be the target, says Arizona State University professor Ronald Greeley. Although Europa ... > full story

Rosetta Correctly Lined Up For Critical Mars Swingby (February 16, 2007) -- ESA mission controllers have confirmed Rosetta is on track for a critical 250-km Mars swingby on 25 February. Engineers have started final preparations for the delicate operation, which includes an ... > full story

Mars Orbiter Sees Effects Of Ancient Underground Fluids (February 16, 2007) -- Liquid or gas flowed through cracks penetrating underground rock on Mars, according to a report based on some of the first observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These fluids may have ... > full story

Spacecraft Reaches Milestone, Reports Technical Glitches (February 15, 2007) -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft this month is set to surpass the record for the most science data returned by any Mars spacecraft. While the mission continues to produce data at record ... > full story

Saturn's Moon Enceladus Is A 'Cosmic Graffiti Artist,' Astronomers Discover (February 14, 2007) -- Astronomers from the University of Virginia and other institutions have found that Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, is a "cosmic graffiti artist," pelting the surfaces of at least 11 ... > full story

Study Shows Moon In New Light (February 7, 2007) -- Light has been shed on the dark parts of the Moon with experiments by University of Edinburgh researchers simulating billions of years of lunar ... > full story

Probing NASA's Plans For A Lunar Colony (February 5, 2007) -- The success of NASA's plans for a permanent human outpost on the moon may depend on the availability of technology that exploits the moon's environment and natural resources to obtain essentials like ... > full story

Lutetia Asteroid In Rosetta's Spotlight (January 26, 2007) -- Earlier this month ESA's Rosetta had a first look at asteroid 21-Lutetia, one of the targets of its long mission. The onboard camera OSIRIS imaged the asteroid passing through its field of view ... > full story

Zooming To Pluto, New Horizons Spacecraft Approaches Jupiter (January 21, 2007) -- Just a year after it was dispatched on the first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, the APL-built New Horizons spacecraft is on the doorstep of the solar system's largest planet -- about to swing ... > full story

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Neptune's natural satellites -- Neptune has 13 known moons. The largest by far is Triton, discovered by William Lassell just 17 days after the discovery of Neptune itself. It took a hundred years to discover the second, Nereid. ... > full article

Dysnomia (moon of Eris) -- Dysnomia, is a moon of the dwarf planet Eris. The satellite is about 60 times fainter than Eris, and its diameter is estimated to be approximately eight times smaller. Astronomers now know that three ... > full article

Uranus' natural satellites -- Uranus has 27 known moons. The first two moons (Titania and Oberon) were discovered by William Herschel on March 13, 1787. Two more moons (Ariel and Umbriel) were discovered by William Lassell in ... > full article

Asteroid belt -- The asteroid belt is a region of the solar system falling roughly between the planets Mars and Jupiter where the greatest concentration of asteroid orbits can be found. Despite popular imagery, the ... > full article

Deimos (moon) -- Deimos is probably an asteroid that was perturbed by Jupiter into an orbit that allowed it to be captured by Mars, though this hypothesis is still in some dispute. Like most bodies of its size, ... > full article

Gas giant -- A gas giant is a large planet that is not primarily composed of rock or other solid matter. Gas giants may have a rocky or metallic core—in fact, such a core is thought to be required for a gas giant ... > full article

Eclipse -- An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when one celestial object moves into the shadow of another. The term is most often used to describe either a solar eclipse, when the Moon's shadow ... > full article

Charon (moon) -- Charon, discovered in 1978, is, depending on the definition employed, either the largest moon of Pluto or one member of a double dwarf planet with Pluto being the other member. With the discovery in ... > full article

Planet -- The International Astronomical Union defines "planet" as a celestial body that, within the Solar System that is in orbit around the Sun; has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid ... > full article

Jupiter's moons -- Jupiter has 63 known natural satellites. Although claims are made for the observation of one of Jupiter's moons by Chinese astronomer Gan De in 364 BC, the first certain observations of Jupiter's ... > full article

Saturn's natural satellites -- Saturn is currently known to have 56 moons, many of which were discovered very recently, and 3 additional un-confirmed, hypothetical moons. However, a precise number of moons can never be given, as ... > full article

Phobos (moon) -- Phobos is the larger and innermost of Mars' two moons, and is named after Phobos, son of Ares (Mars) from Greek Mythology. Phobos orbits closer to a major planet than any other moon in the solar ... > full article

Solar system -- The Solar System comprises the Sun and the retinue of celestial objects gravitationally bound to it: the eight planets, their 162 known moons, three currently identified dwarf planets and their four ... > full article

Transit of Venus -- A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and the Earth, obscuring a small portion of the Sun's ... > full article

Voyager program -- The Voyager program consisted of a pair of unmanned scientific probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, launched in 1977. They were sent to study Jupiter and Saturn, using an advantageous planetary alignment ... > full article

Saturn -- Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun. It is a gas giant, the second-largest planet in the solar system after Jupiter. Saturn has a prominent system of rings, consisting of mostly ice particles ... > full article

Jupiter -- Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and by far the largest within the solar system. Jupiter is usually the fourth brightest object in the sky (after the Sun, the Moon and Venus); however at ... > full article

Neptune -- Neptune is the eighth and outermost planet in our solar system. It is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third-largest by mass; Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more ... > full article

Definition of planet -- The definition of "planet" has for some time been the subject of intense debate. Although the word dates back thousands of years, no officially decreed scientific definition of "planet" existed ... > full article

Mercury (planet) -- Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the solar system, orbiting the Sun once every 88 days. It ranges in brightness from about −2.0 to 5.5 in apparent magnitude, but is not easily ... > full article