When the solar system formed, rocks (and other dense, heavy materials in the dust cloud such as iron and uranium) tended to gather closer to the Sun, and these materials combined together to form ...

The orbits of the planets around the sun have been the source for many a scientific debate. Their current orbital properties ...

scattered through the solar system without a permanent home. Many of these rocks orbit the Sun in an area between Mars and Jupiter known as the asteroid belt. They can be very large - the biggest, ...

Observations made of Jupiter’s moon Io during the Juno mission’s flybys helped astronomers confirm how and why Io became the ...

Chondritic meteorites (chondrites) are some of the oldest rocks in our solar system, forming 4.5 billion years ago. Therefore ...

The moderate tilts and slightly elongated paths of these planets — long considered a mystery — could be the result of a ...

On Christmas Eve, NASA's Parker Solar Probe will break its own records for speed and closest approach to the sun. Two giant asteroids that struck Earth about 36 million years ago did not cause any ...

Faint magnetic properties in primitive asteroid fragments suggest an early magnetic field strong enough to shepherd the ...

Long after the planets of the Solar System formed, catastrophic collisions continued, with a climax about 4 billion years ago during an interval called the Late Heavy Bombardment. The scars of ...

For spectators, total solar eclipses – such as the one that dazzled millions in April across North America – represent ...