In 1994, fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter

Deep Impact was the first mission to probe beneath a comet's surface

The NASA mission sent a probe to deliberately crash into comet Tempel 1, producing an explosion equivalent to 4.7 tons of TNT. The payload included a compact disk with more than 625,000 names of people who participated in the "Send Your Name to a Comet!" campaign.

Galileo's Jupiter discovery shattered Earth-centered universe beliefs

Using a telescope inspired by Dutch designs, Galileo spotted four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610, providing undeniable evidence against geocentrism and fueled support for the heliocentric model. Galileo’s original telescope design stretched 20 meters long—a feat of optical engineering for its time.

View a gallery of the best images of Jupiter from the Juno mission

Using the JunoCam, scientists have observed several of Jupiter's features, including cyclones, the Great Red Spot, and cloud bands and zones. The mission's effectiveness has resulted in its extension from July 2021 to September 2025.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captures enormous aurora displays on Jupiter

The auroras flicker faster and brighter than those seen on Earth. This contrasts with earlier predictions that the lights would fade slowly over several minutes, providing insights into how Jupiter's magnetosphere operates.

The Hubble Space Telescope made discoveries within our solar system and across the universe

The observatory helped confirm the presence of water on Jupiter's moon Europa, and uncovered seasonal variations on planets like Uranus. It also observed exoplanets and gravitational lensing, proved the existence of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, and detected the accelerated expansion of the universe.

Violent storms and crushing pressure await those inside Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

As seen from space, Jupiter’s most striking feature is an anticyclone 30% larger than Earth, with winds twice the speed of Category 5 hurricanes. The descent into the storm brings enough pressure to strip atoms of their electrons.

Jupiter’s size forced the creation of modified planetary formation models

Since solar winds remove gases from protoplanetary disks within millions of years of a star’s birth, models needed to provide a mechanism to jump-start Jupiter’s formation and growth. The solution involved incorporating pebbles of matter into the disk.

Jupiter may have affected the trajectory of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs

Despite its reputation as Earth’s cosmic shield, Jupiter’s gravity pulls more asteroids into Earth-crossing orbits. Simulations show that Earth experiences over three times more asteroid impacts because of Jupiter’s influence than if Jupiter didn’t exist.

Visualize the anatomy of a comet

The solid nucleus holds the frozen molecules, which are heated into a gaseous state once the comet is within three times Earth's distance from the sun. The surrounding coma, from which comets get their name, is a spherical cloud that can grow larger than Jupiter, from which tails develop.

View a gallery of notable comets

The collection features 1973's Kohoutek, which had been dubbed the "comet of the century," 1965's Ikeya-Seki—one of the brightest comets of the millennium—and 2002's NEAT, a comet that survived a coronal mass ejection as it passed near the sun.

There may be over one trillion comets in the Kuiper Belt

Named after Gerard Kuiper, who theorized the existence of a band of icy objects beyond Neptune in 1951, direct evidence for its existence did not arrive until 1992, when the first trans-Neptunian object, besides Pluto and its moon Charon, was observed. Comets with periods of less than 200 years originate from this belt.

The European Space Agency placed a lander on the surface of a comet in 2014

Launched in 2004, the Rosetta spacecraft performed three flybys of Earth and one of Mars as gravitational slingshots to gain the necessary velocity to successfully place the Philae lander module on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Philae achieved a soft landing only after bouncing twice from failed deployments of its anchoring harpoons.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

Io, Jupiter’s moon, is the most volcanically active body in the solar system

The innermost and third-largest of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, Io’s volcanic activity is driven by tidal heating from Jupiter’s gravitational pull. Its atmosphere is very thin and primarily composed of sulfur dioxide, and its volcanic eruptions can exceed 1,000°C.

The Event Horizon Telescope captured the first photo of a black hole in 2019

Predicted by Einstein in 1916, these invisible objects can be indirectly seen through their accretion discs and X-ray bursts. Over 40 million trillion black holes may be scattered throughout the universe.

Visualize the impact of satellites and space debris orbiting Earth

According to NASA, approximately 9,000 metric tons of debris are orbiting Earth, with 70% of it located in low Earth orbit, where the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station reside. The growing reliance on space-based platforms for modern technologies, including Starlink satellites, increases the risk of debris collisions.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.

The ancient Greeks and Romans viewed comets and meteors as divine omens

Both considered the appearance of a comet or its fragments as a precursor to significant events, such as the birth of a notable figure or the death of a ruler. One observed in 44 BCE was believed to be a sign of the deification of Julius Caesar after his assassination.

The Challenger disaster delayed the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope

The 1986 explosion of the space shuttle shortly after liftoff killed seven crew members and grounded NASA's space fleet. Scientists used the downtime to refine ground control software and upgrade telescope instrument sensitivity, but maintaining the telescope's clean room storage cost NASA approximately $6M per month.

Metallic hydrogen exists in Jupiter and Saturn due to high pressure and temperature

This state of hydrogen has metallic properties, including conductivity, which powers these planets' magnetic fields. First theorized in the 1930s, its existence was confirmed through indirect evidence before being created in a Harvard lab in 2017.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Ten impact craters you can visit

See photos of ten wild Earth impact craters across the world, the result of impacts occurring between thousands and millions of years ago.

Observations from Hubble contributed to Pluto's demotion from planetary status

Before the flyby of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope provided images of Pluto and its moon Charon, which was similar in size. Rather than a unique ninth planet, Pluto became reclassified as a dwarf planet, like many similar objects in the Kuiper Belt.

As of 2025, scientific evidence strongly supports 3I/ATLAS being a comet

Claims of alien technology would require the celestial object to transmit measurable technological signals, which were not detected by the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope. Previous telescope observations identified that 3I/ATLAS's chemical composition, structure, and orbital characteristics are consistent with those of an interstellar comet.

Explore every meteor shower from space

Every year, Earth travels through a series of meteor showers—the Perseids in August, the Lyrids in April—and a fraction of them light up the sky as they hit the atmosphere. Explore each group of meteors with this fascinating, year-round interactive.

Colorizers convert Hubble's gray scale images into color composites of different wavelengths

The near-infrared and ultraviolet light captured by the space telescope is not visible to human eyes, but observational data of these types of light can be filtered and modified into visible colors. Many detailed images of astronomical objects are the result of combining these artificially colored images into layers.

What are the Pillars of Creation?

The Pillars of Creation, recently photographed by the James Webb Space Telescope, are a gas-and-dust-filled space region 7,000 light years away where young stars are being born in the aftermath of a supernova. Learn why scientists say the formation has been long destroyed.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Neutron stars, the remains of some massive stars after they explode in a supernova, are the densest directly observable objects in the universe.

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

See images of medical cases of firework injuries shared on this 'Instagram for doctors.' (Warning: Graphic content)

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

Poison ivy will likely become both larger and more resilient due to climate change.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.

Coral polyps reproduce via broadcast spawning, where entire reefs simultaneously release reproductive cells for about one hour, once a year.