Learn about the Parker Solar Probe, which 'touched' the sun in 2021

Understanding why charged particles from the sun protect Earth from more dangerous particles

The solar wind engulfs the solar system in a protective bubble called the heliosphere, which was first theorized in the late 1950s based on studies of cosmic rays—high-energy particles traveling through space at near light speed. The heliosphere shields the solar system from much of this ionizing radiation originating elsewhere in the Milky Way.

View media of the sun's south pole, taken for the first time in 2025

Captured in March 2025 by the Solar Orbiter—a satellite developed by ESA and NASA—the images and video are the first to be taken by an object not moving around the sun's equator. The orbiter moved outside the plane of the planets by using Venus to slingshot it into a tilted orbit, and the data it collected will help scientists better understand the sun's magnetic activity.

Inside the James Webb's amazing sun shields

The Webb team has stationed its mammoth observatory in solar orbit—and brought its instruments below 40 kelvins (minus 233 ºC). Remarkably, most of the cooling has been done passively, by shielding the telescope from the sun and letting physics take care of the rest.

NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor can detect asteroids coming from the sun

Telescopes directed at the sun or lacking heat shields may become damaged, limiting our ability to monitor potentially dangerous objects coming from that direction. The NEO Surveyor is built to overcome this problem and spot asteroids that reflect as little as 5% of incoming light.

Listen to samples of 'sounds' produced by the sun's internal vibrations

Sonification can turn otherwise inaudible vibrations into audible sounds, just as scientists colorize images of celestial objects taken outside the visible range into colors our eyes can interpret. This has been used to turn the vibrations within the sun detected by the Parker Solar Probe into audio clips that resemble chirping and whistling.

The International Space Station is powered entirely by large solar arrays

Launched in 1998, its original solar panels were designed to withstand no more than 20 years of wear from temperature swings and micrometeoroid impacts in space. Replacement panels that roll out like carpets have since been installed.

In 2018, SpaceX launched a Tesla Roadster into heliocentric orbit for publicity

As of February 2023, the vehicle and its mannequin driver—dubbed "Starman"—have completed three and a quarter revolutions around the sun. One paper estimated that the car has a 22% chance of crashing into Earth within the next 15 million years.

Learn about solar neutrinos—about 70 billion of which pass through your thumbnail every second

About 100 quadrillion sextillion (10³⁸) of these elusive particles are created in the core every second, making up about 1% of the sun's total energy output. Because they seldom interact with normal matter, highly specialized equipment is needed to detect them, allowing scientists to probe what is happening in the solar core.

Space probes propelled by lasers may one day visit distant planetary systems

Launched in 2016, Breakthrough Starshot is a project to send gram-sized spacecraft to the nearest stars and their planets at 10% to 20% the speed of light after being accelerated by ground-based laser systems. The project requires orders of magnitude advancements to current technology.

View the internal structure of the sun and its puzzling surrounding atmosphere

From the stellar core to the surface, the sun's density decreases from more than 10 times that of lead to 0.00001% that of air, while temperatures drop from millions to thousands. Temperatures increase from the sun's surface to the outermost layer of its atmosphere—the corona—a phenomenon whose explanation is still under investigation.

NASA uses a specialized plasma wind tunnel to test heat shield technology

The ArcJet Complex ionizes compressed air that fires onto shields at hypersonic speeds, replicating the conditions of high-speed, planetary reentry. An enhanced facility incorporates lasers to mimic the radiant heating experienced during high-energy atmospheric traversal.

Intended to last four years, the Voyager spacecraft have lasted nearly five decades

Launched in 1977, the Voyager probes still send data from billions of miles away, guided by engineers who’ve turned down promotions to stay with the mission. The team continues to support the probes as they move 37,000 mph through space.

The solar system formed between 4.5 and 4.6 billion years ago

Its age is best estimated by studying meteorites from the early formation period of the planetary system, including Erg Chech 002 (4.565 billion years old) and NWA 11119 (4.5648 billion years old). Solar analysis and stellar evolution models estimate the sun's age to be approximately 4.57 billion years.

Distinguishing between various solar surface phenomena, including solar flares and sunspots

Flares are sudden eruptions of electromagnetic radiation caused by a buildup of magnetic energy in the sun's atmosphere and often occur near sunspots, where strong magnetic fields limit the flow of hot material, creating these cooler regions. Flares can also be accompanied by coronal mass ejections—large explosions of plasma from the sun's upper atmosphere with their own magnetic fields.

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

Gaming out how our solar system might catch a new planet

If Pluto's downgraded status to a dwarf planet has got you down, consider this: Scientists think there's a chance our solar system could catch a new planet. The first ever observed so-called Interstellar Object was reported in 2017, a reddish, cigar-shaped rock astronomers named Oumuamua. Although it left in 2022, scientists believe an object with the right mass and trajectory might take a seat at the planetary table. Learn how it would work here.

The Polaris Dawn program led to the first commercial spacewalk

As part of the Polaris program, this first mission included a crew comprising astronauts and SpaceX engineers, who conducted scientific experiments and cultural outreach, such as raising funds for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

A global list of every space exploration mission

Learn how and why we explore our solar system and beyond with space exploration missions, and find out how you can get involved.

How scientists discovered helium from sunlight over a decade before seeing it on Earth

In 1868, using tools that dispersed light into its constituent colors like a prism, astronomers Pierre Jules César Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer independently identified a bright yellow line in the solar spectrum that didn't match any known element. Fourteen years later, amid continued skepticism over the existence of a new element, the same spectral signature was observed in lava on Earth.

How a pulsar's properties led to the discovery of the first exoplanets

In 1992, astronomers examining the radio waves emitted by PSR B1257+12 as it swept past detectors every 0.006219 seconds noticed occasional deviations at regular intervals. Further analysis revealed the existence of two planets beyond our solar system orbiting the neutron star, causing it to wobble and affecting pulsar timing.

How NASA measures marsquakes

Most probes sent to other planets and asteroids focus on surface phenomena, but NASA's InSight Lander is interested in looking deeper. Studying marsquakes as well as the red planet's crust and core, InSight provided four years of insight into how the rocky planets of the inner solar system formed.

A comet's tails point away from the sun, rather than trailing its motion

The ion tail, composed of gases ionized by solar radiation and pushed by the solar wind, points away from the sun. In contrast, the dust tail is pushed away by radiative pressure and curves away from the comet's motion. As the comet approaches the sun, both tails get longer.

Take a tour of The Planetary Society headquarters with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Led by Bill Nye, the Hayden Planetarium director examines the LightSail aircraft, observes historical artifacts, such as a Mars meteorite, and explores props from the "Cosmos" TV series, which was hosted by Planetary Society cofounder Carl Sagan.

Launched in 2020, NASA's Perseverance rover was equipped with a deployable helicopter

Nicknamed "Percy" and designed as the successor to the Curiosity rover, the vehicle has covered more than 36 kilometers (22 miles), collected dozens of samples, and taken hundreds of images while searching for signs of ancient microbial life.

NASA's Stardust mission collected and returned samples from a comet

Launched in 1999, the spacecraft traveled to comet Wild 2 and captured more than 10,000 dust particles from its coma using a tennis racket-like mesh covered in aerogel. It also took pictures of the comet before returning to Earth and releasing the collection canister during its 2006 flyby.

Planeterrellas create artificial auroras that mimic the atmospheric displays of light by setting up an electric field between two metal balls in a jar filled with a small amount of air.

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

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Solar power is converting the sun's energy into thermal or electrical energy

Solar energy is the most abundant renewable energy resource. It can be captured in photovoltaic cells to generate electricity, solar heating and cooling technologies for temperature control, and concentrated solar power to drive steam turbines.

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.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on 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.'

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

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.

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

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.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

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

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

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

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

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

The deadliest aspect of volcanic eruptions is often not lava, but pyroclastic flows—avalanches of ash, gas, and rock that can move more than half the speed of sound.

Pure water does not conduct electricity because this flow of energy requires the movement of charged particles, and water is a neutral molecule.

An Ebola vaccine was developed during the 2018 west African Ebola outbreak, but the 2026 Ebola outbreak is with a different species of the virus, not the one that the vaccine is approved to treat.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.