Solar sails are an exciting way to travel through the solar system because they get their propulsion from the sun. NASA has developed several solar sails, and their newest, the Advanced Composite ...

Introduction: NASA's solar system exploration paradigm : the first fifty years and a look at the next fifty / James L. Green and Kristen J. Erickson -- Part I. Overview. Exploring the Solar System : ...

The Sun is the source of energy for life on Earth and is the strongest modulator of the human physical environment. In fact, the Sun’s influence extends throughout the solar system, both through ...

Unfortunately, this book can't be printed from the OpenBook. If you need to print pages from this book, we recommend downloading it as a PDF. Visit NAP.edu/10766 to get more information about this ...

China envisions exploring the solar system, and it seems that would happen soon. The country launched Tianwen-2, an innovative space probe tasked with retrieving samples from an uncharted asteroid and ...

Pt. 1. The golden age, 1957-1982. The beginning -- Of landers and orbiters -- The grandest tour -- Pt. 2. Hiatus and renewal, 1983-1996. The decade of Halley -- The era of flagships -- Faster, cheaper ...

PASADENA, Calif. — Fifty years ago on a mid-December day, NASA’s Mariner 2 spacecraft sailed close to the shrouded planet Venus, marking the first time any spacecraft had ever successfully made a ...

Since humanity first gazed up at the night sky, we’ve been driven by an insatiable curiosity to understand what lies beyond our pale blue dot. The past six decades of space exploration have delivered ...

The U.S. planetary science community is sounding the alarm about plans to discard a nuclear technology that has powered dozens of NASA missions over the past 50 years But RPS is expensive, costing ...

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend a night on Mars? This excerpt from the new book "Daydreaming in the Solar System" by John E. Moores and Jesse Rogerson, takes a poetic look at ...