This video explores how long it really takes to reach the outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto by tracing past missions, their routes, and the engineering trade-offs between speed, fuel, ...

"It all works like intricate clock gears. Throw more gears into the mix and it all breaks." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. What ...

An illustration of the scale of our solar system. Distances here are measured in astronomical units (AU). (Credit: NASA) Click on an article about space on Discover, and you’ll likely run into a ...

Our solar system may have an outer “edge” just outside the orbit of Pluto, astronomers announced recently. Their results suggest that early in the history of the solar system, some event stripped away ...

The gravitational influence of dark matter on stellar motions within galaxies, particularly the high velocities of stars in the Milky Way, is the primary evidence for its existence. This influence is ...

In 2006, updated research led to Pluto being controversially demoted to dwarf planet status by the International Astronomical Union. The reasoning was that Pluto's location in the far-flung ...

There’s a bit of a paradox about our galaxy: it’s both jam-packed with stars and cavernously empty. The Milky Way is crowded in the sense that it holds hundreds of billions of stars, as well as ...

Astronomers have picked up evidence of an Earth-sized world, distinct from the previously hypothesised Planet Nine and Planet ...

It's equivalent to the glow of 10 fireflies spread across the entire night sky. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Did someone leave ...

Astronomers have been scouring the outer solar system for signs of a hypothetical ninth planet for almost a decade, without success. However, we may finally be on the cusp of finding it, experts say.