Exploring the Solar System

NASA officially confirms that Voyager 1 has reached interstellar space. This makes this the first spacecraft to exit our solar system, a mark in history to be remembered forever.

Rovers and orbiting spacecraft have been combing the surface of Mars for evidence of water. Here's what they've found.

How heat and light are produced by fusion reactions inside the sun, and how they exit its surface and travel across the solar system.

A beautiful trip through the solar sytem, based on NASA's Science on a Sphere program "The Wanderers." In ancient times, humans observed that some stars were not fixed. They called these stars wanderers. We know them as planets.

While Mars Rover Curiosity is studying the Red Planet from the ground, the Maven satellite will give us important data taken from the upper atmosphere. Was Mars ever full of water, and as lush as the forests of Earth? By studying various atomic and molecular processes, Maven will help to decipher the mysterious history of Mars.

The Mars Science Lab landed on Mars on August 6, 2012. It will help determine whether Mars has ever been able to support life.

This virtual tour is based on data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Enjoy this "new" Moon and its noteworthy destinations. It's so clear and beautiful you'll want to go there yourself.

To the naked eye, our sun is an unremarkable ball of heat and light. Under the eye of the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the sun is a seething maelstrom of magnetic phenomena, coronal mass coronal mass ejections, sunspots, and solar flares.

New images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft show the moon's crust is being stretched, forming minute valleys in a few small areas on the lunar surface. Scientists propose this geologic activity occurred less than 50 million years ago, which is considered recent compared to the moon's age of more than 4.5 billion years.

From NASA, this video takes viewers through the moon's evolutionary history, and reveals how it came to appear the way it does today. It likely started as a giant ball of magma formed in the collision of a Mars-sized object with the Earth.

Here are some of the highlights captured so far by NASA satellites in 2012: powerful X-class flares, flamboyant CMEs, and swirling turbulence on its surface. Our favorite is the "magnificent CME" from August 2012.

When the Rover Curiosity landed on Mars, space and science fans all over the world rejoiced. But it is not there just to take pictures. This incredible piece of machinery is a one-ton, all-inclusive laboratory, capable of analyzing all aspects of Mars.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has brought us front row center for a solar show filled with radiant bursts and dark mysteries.

Dust devils occur on Earth as well as on Mars. They are spinning columns of air, made visible by the dust they pull off the ground. Unlike a tornado, a dust devil typically forms on a clear day when the ground is heated by the sun, warming the air just above the ground.

What the Dawn spacecraft will learn on its mission to the asteroid belt.