Planetary Science

Using the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory, astronomers are beginning the largest and deepest survey of the sky. What will they see?

The Psyche spacecraft flew by Mars earlier this year on its way to a metal-rich asteroid, capturing the images along the way

The planet LHS 1140 b lies in its star’s habitable zone, which already made it a prime candidate as a possible host for life

Solar eclipses are a rare and brief opportunity for scientists to gather data on everything from the physics of the sun to air pressure in the upper atmosphere

Erythrulose—a sugar found in raspberries—is also prevalent in a giant molecular cloud close to our galaxy’s core, scientists have discovered

Other planets have moons, too. Do they get eclipses like we do?

A strange class of comet could explain the enigmatic behavior of ‘Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object—and even shed light on how Earth became habitable

The exoplanet telescope TESS revealed a distant world using an entirely different detection method than the one it was built around

The moon is Earth’s constant companion. But will that always be the case?

Astronomers have for the first time observed an atmosphere around a giant planet orbiting a white dwarf

Mars researchers are wrestling with the potential costs of a flashy new NASA mission to the Red Planet

Next summer, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will start sidling up to several asteroids near Jupiter. On its way there, it has studied another space rock up close