Mariner 10—the first spacecraft to visit multiple planets and use gravity assist to fling itself from one to another—swept past Mercury three times in the 1970s. It returned striking photos of the planet's surface and revealed what we know about temperature changes, giving scientists and astronomers a basic understanding of processes.
Only two missions have visited the mysterious little planet tucked against the sun. Mariner's images of Mercury opened up a whole new world for exploration. Messenger would give scientists much, much more data along with surprises astronomers could never have imagined.
Other things to check out:
In a Distant Galaxy, Colliding Exoplanets Are Upending What We Knew About Solar System Formation
"This is a rare opportunity to study catastrophic collisions occurring late in a planetary system's history," Alycia Weinberger, a staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., and author of a recent paper on the collision, said in a statement .
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Clouds of dust are ubiquitous in space. Planets form when the dust particles floating around young stars clump together and grow over millions of years into large, gravitationally dense objects. By the time planets settle into their orbits around a star, much of the smaller particles of dust and debris in the environment have either been pulled into the star as fuel, or swept away by solar winds into a ring of schmutz on the solar system's cold outer edges.
Today's Your Last Chance to Help Name an Alien Solar System! | Space
Right now, it's a solar system known only by the designation HD 17156. Before 2019 ends, it will bear an entirely different second moniker — perhaps one suggested by you.
That's because the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which oversees all celestial nomenclature, has decided to mark its 100th anniversary by letting each country name a planetary system. The United States got HD 17156, and today (Oct. 15) is the last day for the public to submit proposed names, so get thinking.
New Models Pinpoint Collapse Of Interstellar Cloud That Formed Our Solar System
The earliest details of how our solar system formed from the collapse of a protostellar cloud and into a planet-bearing disk remain as enigmatic as ever. But models of these early protosolar days are helping planetary scientists better understand these early processes.
Although Aluminum-26 is long gone, researchers are still able to infer its ancient isotopic ratio to Aluminum-27 inside these meteorites, which in turn helps theorists get a handle on the timing of events throughout the early forming solar system.
While you're here, how about this:
A Faux Saturn Moon Titan on Earth Could Solve Solar System Mystery | Space
Big, schmancy compounds keep popping up all over the solar system , and new research may help clear up confusion about how they form in so many places.
"These dunes are pretty large," study senior author Ralf Kaiser, a chemist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, told Space.com, nearly as tall as the Great Pyramid in Egypt, he added. "If you want to understand the carbon and hydrocarbon cycle and the processes of hydrocarbons on Titan, it's really important to understand, of course, where the dominant source of carbon comes from."
Interstellar interloper is a comet resembling those in our solar system - Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The second interstellar object ever spotted passing through the solar system is a comet that appears quite like those formed in our neighborhood of the cosmos, providing fresh evidence that other planetary systems may be very similar to our own.
First detected in August by an amateur astronomer named Gennady Borisov, it is called 2I/Borisov. The only previous interstellar visitor discovered in our solar system was a cigar-shaped rocky object called ‘Oumuamua found in 2017.
Earth-Like Planets May Be Common Outside Our Solar System, Scientists Discover - VICE
Scientists have directly observed the rocky guts of exoplanets, which are worlds from different star systems, by watching the fallout of these objects crashing into the corpses of dead stars.
This mind-boggling technique has revealed that exoplanets are similar in composition to planets in our own solar system, implying that worlds like Earth may be plentiful in our galaxy, according to a study published on Thursday in Science .
The solar system has too many moons – it's time for a cull | New Scientist
OK, WHAT I’m about to say may cause some distress. You remember how it was with Pluto? In 2006 , the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to downgrade the much-loved ninth planet to a mere dwarf planet . More than a decade later , it seems some people still haven’t gotten over it. But I’m still going to say it: things are getting a little out of hand with the solar system’s moons.
On 7 October, astronomers announced the discovery of 20 moons around Saturn . This took the total number of moons in the solar system to 214. The …
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Small yet mighty, there are countless ways to wear the #FendiPeekaboo Iconic Mini bag. How will you style yours? P… https://t.co/ZQenNr2MGF Fendi (from Rome, Italy) Tue Nov 05 17:30:00 +0000 2019
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