Solar System

The top news about what's going on in the cosmic neighborhood—from planet nine to the sun, and everything in between.

Latest in Solar System

a picture of the planet neptune. it is colored blue on a black background

September Stargazing: Summer’s official end, a big ol’ moon, and a chance to see Neptune

a white telescope launches aboard a rocket

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman space telescope launches

By Andrew Paul, Laura Baisas

Image of 220P/McNaught comet in night sky

Look up! Now’s your chance to spot an unusually luminous comet

Image of SpaceX lunar crater created by upper stage rocket with a red arrow pointing to it

NASA shares first images of SpaceX moon crash site

We just got a glimpse at what NASA’s Skyfall helicopters will look like in action

By Sara Hashemi

Artist's impression of the cosmocube orbiter above the moon

A suitcase-sized satellite may unlock the secrets of the early universe

Close up shot of someone putting sunscreen lotion on a child on a sunny day.

4 sunscreen myths too many people still get wrong

By Popular Science Team

Highly detailed image of roiling plasma on the surface of the sun

Plasma waves spotted on sun’s surface for the first time

a meteor shower over grasslands

August stargazing: A planet parade, two eclipses, and one scary star

Martian butte surrounded by polygonal sediment formations

Curiosity rover spots ancient sea of Martian polygons

This illustration shows the system around the star CD-35 2722, with the newly found moon-like object at the centre. The star –– the point source to the left –– has about half the mass of our Sun, and it is orbited by a brown dwarf, the reddish-brown object seen here in the foreground (right). The brown dwarf has about 37 times the mass of Jupiter: too massive to be a planet, but not massive enough to have sustained nuclear fusion like stars. This brown dwarf is, in turn, orbited by a newly discovered object at least as massive as Jupiter, seen at the centre of this image. This new object, found with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), is difficult to label. It behaves like a moon in the sense that it orbits an object that orbits a star. But this ‘moon’ is massive enough to be a planet, and the object it orbits, a brown dwarf, is neither a planet nor a star.

‘Super weird’ object may be space’s first confirmed exomoon

Screenshot from the time-lapse video shows the approach, close approach, and departure of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft at Mars as it used the planet’s gravity for a boost on its way to the asteroid Psyche.

Mars’ desolate desert landscape captured by asteroid-bound NASA spacecraft

Low-angle photo of good-looking mature woman with blond braided hair wearing sundress standing with arms raised in sunlight with blue sky in background.

Does summer actually make your hair grow faster?

By RJ Mackenzie

This artist’s concept depicts a near-Earth asteroid with an elongated orbit. A few objects such as these can exhibit significant perturbations in their motion around the Sun and, like the asteroid 1998 SH2, could turn out to be regular comets with a weak tail and coma (the gas and dust around a comet’s nucleus). NASA/JPL-Caltech

Near-Earth asteroid not an asteroid at all

This image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was taken on 18 January 2026 with the FORS2 instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). It is a stack of several images spanning 14 minutes. As the comet moves on the sky, the stars appear as trails in the background.

Comet 3I/ATLAS is older than the sun

Artists impression of exoplanet WD 1856 b transiting its ‘dead’ host star,

The sun’s violent death could look like this

a meteor falls over a desert

July Stargazing: Meteors, more meteors, Pluto, and even more meteors

Game Boy Camera attached to Mount Wilson Observatory telescope eyepiece

Man uses a Game Boy Camera to photograph Jupiter

Asteroid in deep space, illustration

Asteroid as large as 5 cruise ships will soar past Earth this weekend

Lunar surface seen from above

Rare lunar meteorite was smacked three times before finally hitting Earth