Planets

Planets

Here’s why Venus is so unwelcoming

Venus is hard to study. Scientists also find it hard to get money to send spacecraft there. But researchers have ideas about how to tackle both challenges.

Planets

Preparing for that trip to Mars

These scientists are working to make a human mission to Mars a reality.

Planets

Saturn’s rings might be shredded moons

Final data from the Cassini spacecraft put a mass and a date of birth on the gas giant’s iconic rings.

Earth

Hot on the trail of Antarctic meteorites

For intrepid scientists, spotting meteorites against Antarctica’s dazzling whiteness is easy. Then what?

Planets

Space toilet may teach scientists how to scout for life on distant icy moons

Lessons learned from flushing space toilets may help plan life-hunting missions on distant icy moons.

Planets

Cassini spacecraft takes its final bow

Twenty years after it left Earth, NASA’s Cassini mission is about to end — with a crash into Saturn.

Earth

Early Earth may have been a hot doughnut

Synestia is the name some scientists are giving to the smooshed shape Earth might have developed after undergoing a violent cosmic smashup early in its infancy.

Planets

What the Curiosity rover has learned about Mars so far

Scientists take stock of what the Curiosity rover has learned after five years on Mars — and what else it may turn up in the next year or so.

Physics

Early solar system may have slung giant mud balls

The first asteroids may have been great balls of mud. That could solve some puzzling traits of meteorites.

Planets

Small, distant worlds are either big Earths or little Neptunes

The Kepler space telescope data are in. They split Earth-like exoplanets into two groups and reveal 10 new rocky planets in the ‘Goldilocks’ zone.

Planets

Jupiter may be the solar system’s oldest planet

Jupiter’s early existence may explain the odd arrangement of planets in the solar system, a new study suggests.

Planets

Hot, hot planet sets sizzling new record

Astronomers have discovered an odd new exoplanet. Called KELT 9b, is the hottest non-star known.