With some asteroids valued at over US$20 trillion, due to the quantities of precious metals that they are made up of, it is only a matter of time before the exploration of space becomes a commercial undertaking.
There are millions of asteroids of different sizes and composition flying throughout space. One category, known as S-type, [...]

The appearance of outer most (dwarf) planet Pluto has changed significantly in the last two years, after remaining relatively unaltered for the previous 50.
The new images, taken in 2002 and 2003, confirm that Pluto’s surface is actively changing. For reasons that are still mysterious, Pluto’s appearance remained constant for some 50 years of [...]

An explanation as to why the Earth, and the other (smaller) inner planets of the solar system, have not been consumed by the Sun.
It all made sense, except for one tiny problem: this same model also suggested that a little world like Earth shouldn’t exist at all; it (or more precisely, the Moon-size proto-planets [...]

P H E N O M E N A L, an online scale model of the Solar System, which is said to be half a mile in width.
Unlike most models, which are compressed for viewing convenience, the planets here are also shown at their true-to-scale average distances from the Sun. That makes this page [...]

Photos of the surface of Mars as taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
Absolutely incredible.

A summary of the how the two Voyager space probes have expanded our knowledge of the solar system’s outer planets.
How then to summarise Voyager? As Stone observes “I felt that we were all in the tradition of Galileo. He was the first to see the moons of Jupiter and the first to apply an instrument [...]

Awesome National Geographic infographic depicting the exploration of the solar system in the last 50 years… be sure to view the larger version.

Former astronaut Dr Franklin Chang-Diaz has developed plans for a plasma rocket engine that could drastically reduce travel time around the solar system when compared to the rocket engines currently in use.
But once we have this capability, Mars isn’t really the only place that we can go. With a megawatt-class VASIMR, basically we will [...]

It seems not even the orbital stability of the solar system’s inner planets is a given. If Mercury, orbiting closest to the Sun, were to be dragged out of its current orbit by Jupiter (a situation that is somehow possible) all sorts of chaos could ensue.
Mercury is the key to catastrophe. It is especially susceptible [...]

There’s evidence that Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm twice the size of Earth, which has been raging for the last 300 or so years, may be diminishing.
Observations of cloud cover over the past decade or so have suggested the huge, oval tempest was getting smaller as Jupiter’s climate changes. But such observations are tricky [...]