Smooth Sections on Asteroid Itokawa
22.04.2007

Why are parts of this asteroid's surface so smooth? No one is yet sure, but it may have to do with the dynamics of an asteroid that is a loose pile of rubble rather than a solid rock.

50000 Kilometers over the Sun
19.09.2016

What's happening at the edge of the Sun? Although it may look like a monster is rampaging, what is pictured is actually only a monster prominence -- a sheath of thin gas held above the surface by the Sun's magnetic field.

Seeing Titan
31.03.2023

Shrouded in a thick atmosphere, Saturn's largest moon Titan really is hard to see. Small particles suspended in the upper atmosphere cause an almost impenetrable haze, strongly scattering light at visible wavelengths and hiding Titan's surface features from prying eyes.

Odysseus and The Dish
1.03.2024

Murriyang, the CSIROБs Parkes radio telescope points toward a nearly Full Moon in this image from New South Wales, Australia, planet Earth. Bathed in moonlight, the 64 meter dish is receiving weak radio signals from Odysseus, following the robotic lander's February 22 touch down some 300 kilometers north of the Moon's south pole.

Apollo 17 s Moonship
27.12.2025

Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger was designed for flight in the near vacuum of space. Digitally enhanced and reprocessed, this picture taken from Apollo 17's command module America shows Challenger's ascent stage in lunar orbit.

A Dust Devil Crater on Mars
30.12.2003

What caused the streaks in this Martian crater? Since the above image shows streaks occurring both inside and outside the crater, they were surely created after the crater-causing impact. Newly formed trails like these...

Columbia Memorial Station
22.01.2004

After leaving its nest, the Spirit rover turned to captured this spectacular view over the Colombia Memorial Station and the floor of Gusev crater on the 16th sol of its visit to Mars. The sharp picture looks toward the northeast.

Phobos: Doomed Moon of Mars
3.12.2006

This moon is doomed. Mars, the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic. These...

The Missing Craters of Asteroid Itokawa
9.02.2014

Where are the craters on asteroid Itokawa? Missing -- unexpectedly. The Japanese robot probe Hayabusa approached the Earth-crossing asteroid in 2005 and returned pictures showing a surface unlike any other Solar System body yet photographed -- a surface possibly devoid of craters.

Saturns Hyperion: A Moon with Odd Craters
3.10.2005

What lies at the bottom of Hyperion's strange craters? Nobody knows. To help find out, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn swooped past the sponge-textured moon again last week and took an image of unprecedented detail.