A Field Guide to the Planets

Since 1962, robots traverse the solar system; exploring a family album overview of planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, Kuiper Belt objects and long-period comets; flying through some of the solar system's most unique features.

Mercury is a planet of many solar system extremes; learning how these characteristics result in a planet where the Sun sometimes moves backward across the sky; a planet where water ice has been found at the poles.

The Venusian carbon dioxide atmosphere causes the hottest surface temperature in the solar system; the Earth and Venus contain about the same amount of carbon; the forces that result in the extreme atmospheric differences between these two planets.

A theory proposed less than 70 years ago says that plate tectonics could be a main driver of life on Earth; exploring the movement of the planet's surface; the many ways in which a geologically active Earth sustains the biologically active planet.

Earth has a relatively thin atmosphere; without this layer, life would not evolve and thrive; the properties of each atmospheric layer; encountering specific ways to explore each layer as a springboard to exploring the rest of the solar system.

The Earth's moon is the largest moon in the solar system relative to its planet's size; the many ways in which this system affects the tides on Earth and on the Moon, the planet's rotation and revolution, tidal locking, and planetary stability.