Chapter 5: Planetary Orbits Chapter Objectives Upon completion of this chapter you will be able to describe in general terms the characteristics of various types of planetary orbits. You will be able ...

Monday’s single-sol plan included a marathon 45-meter drive (about 148 feet), which put us in position for two full sols of ...

The universe is everything. It includes all of space, and all the matter and energy that space contains. It even includes time itself and, of course, it includes you. Earth and the Moon are part of ...

The recent results of the PWM-5 and -6 technology demonstrations aboard the space station have significantly advanced the technology used for passive plant watering in space. These quantitative ...

Saturn’s moon Titan is an intriguing world cloaked in a yellowish, smoggy haze. Similar to Earth, the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and has weather, including clouds and rain. Unlike Earth, whose ...

The first visible-light image of green aurora on Mars (left), taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument on NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. On the right is a comparison image of the night sky of Mars without ...

On May 10, 2024, the first G5 or “severe” geomagnetic storm in over two decades hit Earth. The event did not cause any catastrophic damages, but it did produce surprising effects on Earth. The storm, ...

One year ago today, a total solar eclipse swept across the United States. The event was a cornerstone moment in the Heliophysics Big Year, a global celebration of the Sun’s influence on Earth and the ...

As the Moon passes opposite the Sun it will move through the shadow of Earth creating a total eclipse of the Moon. The Moon will begin entering the partial shadow Thursday night at 11:57 p.m. EDT, but ...

Large-scale wind patterns around the globe drag ocean surface waters with them, creating complex currents, including some that flow toward the western sides of the ocean basins. The currents hug the ...

The planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, are called terrestrial because they have a compact, rocky surface like Earth's terra firma. The terrestrial planets are the four innermost planets in the ...

Contingency Plans Following the events of 1999, the Hubble team created a contingency plan in preparation for a time when the spacecraft might find itself with less than three working gyros again. The ...