The Latest Breaking News from Solar System

On September 26 at 11.15pm UTC, NASA’s DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) will be the first to deliberately and measurably change the motion of a significant body in our Solar System. In other words, it will smash into an asteroid.

It has already been experienced by over 300,000 people in Derry, Belfast and Cambridge to date

Since 2018, NASA’s InSight mission to Mars has recorded seismic waves from more than 1,300 marsquakes in its quest to probe the internal structure of the red planet. The solar panels of the car-sized robotic lander have become caked with Martian dust, and NASA scientists expect it will completely power…

Astronomers now routinely discover planets orbiting stars outside of the solar system – they’re called exoplanets. But in summer 2022, teams working on NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite found a few particularly interesting planets orbiting in the habitable zones of their parent stars.

Some space scientists believe radio sensing or detecting non-human techno-signatures maybe the best way to find alien life. But others believe there may be physical objects waiting to be found, too.

Discovered by Galileo 400 years ago, the rings of Saturn are about the most striking thing astronomers with small telescopes can spot in our solar system.

The Dawn mission used state-of-the-art ion thrusters to change orbits between bodies in visits to Vesta and Ceres, two Solar System time capsules.

Sure, asteroids did some of the work. But a few came from the fringes of our Solar System — and were kicked in by other stars.

A new study of exoplanet densities reveals that many are about 50% water, whether it’s liquid or ice.