Planetary Science

Meteor camera networks can reveal the hidden history of the solar system, and you can assist from your own backyard

The Tianwen-2 spacecraft is slowly closing in on the near-Earth asteroid Kamo‘oalewa, on a mission that would bring China’s first asteroid samples back to Earth in 2027

Hints of high-pressure chemistry within a rare meteorite suggest this fallen space rock comes from a planet gone wrong in the solar system’s early history

An out-of-this-world weather report from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals how clouds move across a giant planet hundreds of light-years from Earth

To build its moon base, NASA needs a lot of power

NASA’s Mars rovers have found traces of minerals akin to those that make up precious gems on Earth. But their appearance and abundance on Mars is likely very different, experts say

An oddity among exoplanets, L 98-59 d is (so far) in a class all its own, but astronomers expect powerful new telescopes will eventually reveal more like it

The problem with Pluto isn’t its planetary or nonplanetary status—it’s our insistence on declaring the world must be one or the other

The NASA administrator’s latest remarks in support of reexamining Pluto’s status come 20 years after the orb was downgraded to a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union

Rather than slowly condensing over millions of years, the first building blocks of Earth and other planets may have formed rapidly in a chaotic disk at the dawn of the solar system

All the sun’s planets are oddballs. But some are more so than others

Observations by the Mars Express orbiter reveal rapid changes on the Red Planet’s surface from windblown volcanic ash