Solar system

From progress on deciphering the strange features of dwarf planet Ceres to NASA's plans to play with Martian sand and a heroic rescue of Japan's Venus-bound spacecraft, it's been an interesting past couple of weeks

A pair of scientific papers suggest that the ALMA observatory may have detected 2 new "planet-scale" objects associated with the outer realms of the solar system. But should we be awed or skeptical?

A new explanation for the strange grooves on the surface of the martian moon Phobos suggests that the entire satellite already shows signs of how it will eventually be destroyed.

The Cassini mission's third-from-last flyby of the icy moon Enceladus reveals that a highly complex network of thin cracks covering the surface extend all the way into the northern polar region

A new study of fragments from the Chelyabinsk meteor reveal that it went through at least eight impact events spread across the last 4.5 billion years before it ended up impacting Earth

NASA's New Horizons team decide on their next target, a classical Kuiper Belt object that can be reached by January 2019, but the agency must still approve funds for this extended science mission

Early images from New Horizons' encounter with Pluto reveal an extraordinary surface of strange mountains and varying deposits of light and dark material

Although we've only just begun to see the scientific return from NASA's New Horizons mission and its close encounter with the Pluto–Charon system, this has been an unexpectedly profound human endeavor

Titan's lake depressions may form as its organic crust is dissolved by liquid hydrocarbons.

Indigenous methane appears to exist in Martian rocks

A stunning library of comet close-ups

Two new studies hint at a richer picture of what’s happening on Saturn’s extraordinary icy moon Enceladus. At about 500 kilometers in diameter, Enceladus is a diminutive natural satellite.