Exploring the Solar System

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has kept a continuous watch on the Sun. It has returned unprecedented images of solar flares, prominences, and the early stages of coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

The Cassini spacecraft has detected intense radio emissions from Saturn. They come from magnetic fields that thread the planet's the polar regions. They have been shifted into the range of human hearing and compressed in time.

NASA's Curiosity rover mission has found evidence a stream once flowed across the area on Mars where the rover is driving. There is earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars, but this evidence -- images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels -- is the first of its kind.

Saturn Cassini mission team members from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab recount their observations of lightning bolts flashing in the outer regions of Saturn's atmosphere.

Scientists are tracking the path of energy rising from the Sun's core into violent solar tsunamis and outbursts called coronal mass ejections.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found possible ice volcanoes on Saturn's moon Titan that are similar in shape to those on Earth that spew molten rock.

Ultra high-resolution photos of this historic second manned mission to the moon, featuring breathtaking views of the lunar surface.

Breathtaking photographs of mankind's historic first steps on the surface of the moon.

NASA scientists used radar data to reconstruct surface features on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. They found that this frigid methane world has some striking similarities to places on Earth.

Adaptation of the breezy "Science on a Sphere" production by members of NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio. Explores Jupiter's role as the 800 pound gorilla of our solar system, with stops on its fascinating moons and the big red spot.

Beautiful space weather on Saturn from NASA's Cassini Spacecraft.

Images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft show icy particles in Saturn's F ring clumping into giant snowballs as the moon Prometheus makes multiple swings by the ring. This triggers the formation of objects up to 12 miles across.

Discovery of a huge unseen ring around Saturn, courtesy of the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Where did the moon come from? What is it made of? And what events created the distinctive pattern of light and dark on its surface? To find out, we have sent satellites out to crash onto its surface, astronauts to comb its craters and hillsides and collect rocks, and high-tech spacecraft to map its nooks and crannies.

Dawn, the speedy ion-drive spacecraft, left Earth in 2007 bound for Vesta and Ceres in the Asteroid Belt. These are no ordinary asteroids. Scientists see them as tiny, still born planets. They sent Dawn out to fly around them, map them, and look for evidence that will transport them to very early days of our solar system.