Planets

PLANETS: New Worlds, New Discoveries

NASA is at the leading edge of a journey of scientific discovery that promises to reveal new knowledge of our Solar System’s content, origin, evolution and the potential for life elsewhere.  NASA Planetary Science is engaged in one of the oldest of scientific pursuits: the observation and discovery of our solar system’s planetary objects.  With an exploration strategy based on progressing from flybys, to orbiting, to landing, to roving and finally to returning samples from planetary bodies, NASA advances the scientific understanding of the solar system in extraordinary ways, while pushing the limits of spacecraft and robotic engineering design and operations. Since the 1960s, NASA has broadened its reach with increasingly sophisticated missions launched to a host of nearby planets, moons, comets and asteroids. 

History 

All eight planets can be seen with a small telescope; or binoculars. And large observatories continue to provide much useful information. But the possibility of getting up close with interplanetary spacecraft has revolutionized planetary science. Very little of this site would have been possible without the space program

Planet Order 

The Sun

Mercury

Venus

Earth

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Uranus

Neptune

PLANETS: New Worlds, New Discoveries

NASA is at the leading edge of a journey of scientific discovery that promises to reveal new knowledge of our Solar System’s content, origin, evolution and the potential for life elsewhere.  NASA Planetary Science is engaged in one of the oldest of scientific pursuits: the observation and discovery of our solar system’s planetary objects.  With an exploration strategy based on progressing from flybys, to orbiting, to landing, to roving and finally to returning samples from planetary bodies, NASA advances the scientific understanding of the solar system in extraordinary ways, while pushing the limits of spacecraft and robotic engineering design and operations. Since the 1960s, NASA has broadened its reach with increasingly sophisticated missions launched to a host of nearby planets, moons, comets and asteroids. 

History 

All eight planets can be seen with a small telescope; or binoculars. And large observatories continue to provide much useful information. But the possibility of getting up close with interplanetary spacecraft has revolutionized planetary science. Very little of this site would have been possible without the space program

Planet Order 

The Sun

Mercury

Venus

Earth

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Uranus

Neptune