Solar System
Dwarf Planet Facts: Pluto
The image above shows a near true color picture of the dwarf planet designated 134340 Pluto, the first object to be discovered in the Kuiper Belt after Clyde Tombaugh identified it in 1930. Pluto is …
Solar System
Solar System
Asteroid Facts: Hygiea
The image above includes a light-curve derived 3D model of the C-type asteroid designated 10 Hygiea, the fourth largest asteroid in the solar system by both volume and mass, the latter of which is estimated …
Solar System
Asteroid Facts: Pallas
The image above shows the somewhat oblate shape of the B-type asteroid designated 2 Pallas, which is the second asteroid to be discovered, and the third most massive, containing about 7% of all the mass …
Solar System
Asteroid Facts: Vesta
The asteroid designated 4 Vesta is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt with a diameter of 525 kilometres (326 miles). Discovered by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on 29 March 1807, and named after …
Solar System
Dwarf Planet Facts: Ceres
Ceres was thought to be an asteroid for many years but is so much bigger than its rocky neighbors that it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. Although Ceres is reasonably easy to …
Solar System
The Sun: Our Solar System’s Star
The Sun is the star at the center of our Solar System. It is a G2V main-sequence star about 4.6 billion years old, made mostly of hydrogen and helium. Located an average of about 93 …
Solar System
10 Interesting Facts About the Apollo Missions
NASA’s Apollo program took humans to the Moon for the first time, but the famous Apollo 11 landing was only one part of an extraordinary program of space exploration that ran throughout the 1960s and …
Solar System
10 Interesting Facts about the Voyager 1 Probe
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 has survived far beyond anything its designers could reasonably have expected. Nearly five decades later, the spacecraft remains in communication with Earth as it travels through interstellar space, making it …
Solar System
10 Interesting Facts about the Mission to Pluto
Pluto was discovered in 1930, but for most of the 20th century it remained little more than a distant point of light. Even the best telescopes could reveal relatively little about its surface, atmosphere or …
Solar System
10 Interesting Facts about the Missions to Saturn
Saturn is one of the most recognizable planets in the solar system, but spacecraft exploration revealed that the world behind the rings is far stranger and more complex than telescopes from Earth could show. Its …