Solar System Exploration Stories

Nine companies have been selected to conduct early-stage studies of concepts for commercial services to support lower-cost, higher-frequency missions to the Red Planet. NASA has identified nine U.S. companies to perform a total of 12 concept studies of how commercial…

What to look for: Morning Meteors and May Planets See Mars, Saturn, and Mercury in the May morning sky. Antares slips behind the Moon for East Coast U.S. skywatchers. And the eta Aquariid meteors peak May 6th. Transcript What’s Up…

Were you inspired by the solar eclipse to become an amateur astronomer? If so, here are some high-level tips on how to get started, from Night Sky Notes!

The Sun will be at peak activity this year, providing a rare opportunity to study how solar storms and radiation could affect future astronauts on the Red Planet. In the months ahead, two of NASA’s Mars spacecraft will have an…

There’s good news from NASA’s Cloudspotting on Mars project! That’s the project that invites you to help identify exotic clouds high in the Martian atmosphere. Congratulations to the Cloudspotting on Mars team and all the volunteers who have helped spot Martian clouds!

The most surprising revelation from NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover — that methane is seeping from the surface of Gale Crater — has scientists scratching their heads. Living creatures produce most of the methane on Earth. But scientists haven’t found convincing…

Imagery from the solar-powered spacecraft provides close-ups of intriguing features on the hellish Jovian moon. Scientists on NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter have transformed data collected during two recent flybys of Io into animations that highlight two of the Jovian…

Like boulders, rocks, and pebbles scattered across a landscape, asteroids come in a wide range of sizes. Cataloging asteroids in space is tricky because they are faint and they don’t stop to be photographed as they zip along their orbits…

The final downlink shift by the Ingenuity team was a time to reflect on a highly successful mission — and to prepare the first aircraft on another world for its new role. Engineers working on NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter assembled…

NASA has confirmed its Dragonfly rotorcraft mission to Saturn’s organic-rich moon Titan. The decision allows the mission to progress to completion of final design, followed by the construction and testing of the entire spacecraft and science instruments. “Dragonfly is a…