Articles

Jamie Carter

Is it time NASA sent an orbiter to study the other blue planet in our solar system? Proposals for missions to study the ice giant planet Neptune and its mysterious moon Triton have been on NASA’s to-do list for over a decade, but until now nothing has happened.

Jatan Mehta

How did our solar system come to be? Why are the planets, asteroids, comets, and other small worlds where they are now?

The Downlink

Look back on the year’s accomplishments and enjoy the beauty of the cosmos.

The Downlink

Feast your eyes on these images from space, catch up on the latest in exploration news, and get the lowdown on what’s up in the night sky.

The Planetary Society

Six scientists share the major planetary science discoveries of the past decade, and the questions that will drive the next 10 years of solar system exploration.

Andrew Jones

The mission includes a flyby of Neptune and measurements of the heliosphere, the electrically charged gas bubble surrounding our solar system

Mark Marley

Mark Marley explains what planetary scientists mean when they say the word

Amy Simon

Imagine 2 icy worlds far from the Sun. Their serene, blue atmospheres. Huge, ominous-looking storms. Tantalizing glimpses of moons with exotic, icy terrains. Delicate sets of encircling rings.

Björn Jónsson

The color of Uranus and Neptune is similar, but not identical. Uranus appears greener and Neptune bluer.

Björn Jónsson

Björn Jónsson argues that even now, 40 years after Voyager 1 and 2 were launched, a lot of the data they returned is still of high interest.

Ted Stryk

The Voyager missions transformed most of the large worlds of the solar system from points of light into places to be explored.

Van Kane

One fact dominates the planning for any mission to Uranus or Neptune: They lie far from the sun. A newly released NASA report looks at how we can explore these icy giants.

Jason Davis

Only one spacecraft has ever visited Uranus and Neptune: Voyager 2, in the late 1980s. A new NASA report explores the reasons to go back, and what type of mission might take us there.

Emily Lakdawalla

Beautiful new amateur work with 27-year-old Voyager data.

Emily Lakdawalla

When are the solstices and equinoxes on the giant planets, and when are they best positioned for view from Earth? I ask these questions a lot as I write about Earth photos of giant planets, and I finally decided to gather the answers to those questions in a single post.

Emily Lakdawalla

Image processing enthusiast Ian Regan is working on a cool new version of the Voyager 2 Neptune approach movie.

Emily Lakdawalla

There are no spacecraft at Uranus or Neptune, and there haven't been for 30 and 25 years, respectively. So we depend on Earth-based astronomers to monitor them, including Damian Peach.

Emily Lakdawalla

Today's press briefing at the Applied Physics Laboratory in California was preceded by hours of New Horizons team members cryptically dropping hints on Twitter at astonishing details in the seven images downlinked since the flyby. The images are, in fact, astonishing, as well as beautiful, surprising, and puzzling.

Emily Lakdawalla

Now that I have a reasonable-resolution global color view of Pluto, I can drop it into one of my trademark scale image montages, to show you how it fits in with the rest of the similar-sized worlds in the solar system: the major moons and the biggest asteroids.

Paul Schenk

Two months. Eight and half weeks. 58 days. It's a concept almost too difficult to grasp: we are on Pluto's doorstep.