Solar System
Maybe the Elusive Planet 9 Doesn’t Exist After All
Oh Planet Nine, when will you stop toying with us? Whether you call it Planet Nine, Planet X, the Perturber,…
The Solar System Might Not Exist if There Wasn’t a Huge Galactic Collision with the Milky Way Billions of Years Ago
The Milky Way has a number of satellite galaxies; nearly 60 of them, depedending on how we define them. One…
Jupiter is so Big that our Solar System almost had two Suns
About half of all the star systems in the galaxy are made of pairs or triplets of stars. Our solar…
Nutrient-Poor and Energy-Starved. How Life Might Survive at the Extremes in the Solar System
Our growing understanding of extremophiles here on Earth has opened up new possibilities in astrobiology. Scientists are taking another look…
OSIRIS-REx Flew 620 Meters Above its Landing Site. Confirms that it’s a Boulder-Strewn Nightmare, Just Like the Rest of Bennu
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft reached its target, asteroid Bennu (101955 Bennu), on December 3rd, 2018. Since then, the spacecraft has been…
We Know We’re Made of Stardust. But Did it Come From Red Giants?
We've all heard this one: when you drink a glass of water, that water has already been through a bunch…
How Do We Settle on Ceres?
How might humanity go about establishing a colony on Ceres, the largest object in the Main Asteroid Belt?
Drama In Low-Earth Orbit As LightSail2 Deploys Its Sails
LightSail 2 has successfully deployed its solar sails. Shortly after 12:00 pm PST The Planetary Society tweeted that the sails…
The Japanese asteroid-hunter had another photo opportunity when it dropped a target marker on asteroid Ryugu
Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft just launched its second target marker to the surface of the asteroid Ryugu.
Most of the Solar System Should be a Protected Wilderness. One-Eighth Left for Mining and Resource Exploitation
A new study by an astrophysicist and a professor of ethics takes a look at the future of humanity in…