Solar System | featured news

A team of scientists flew to the Australian Outback on Monday and recovered a Japanese space capsule that they hope contains asteroid samples providing clues into the evolution of the solar system.

Scientists have found lots of life-essential water – frozen as ice – in an unexpected place in our solar system: an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.

Neptune may have polished off a super-Earth that once roamed the outer solar system and stolen its moon to boot. The brutal deed could explain mysterious heat radiating from the icy planet and the odd orbit of its moon Triton.

A young star observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope appears to be home to a wild -- and young -- planetary system that shares some of the frenetic dynamics thought to have shaped the early years of our own solar system.

Astronomers have found 32 new planets outside our solar system, adding evidence to the theory that the universe has many places where life could develop....

The first results from Nasa's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (Ibex) spacecraft show unexpected features at our Solar System's edge.

Astronomers have found the strongest evidence yet for an ocean beneath the icy shell of Saturn's Enceladus, suggesting it could join the exclusive club of watery moons in our solar system.

As astronomers become more adept at hunting for, and finding, exoplanets orbiting stars beyond the Solar System, international astronomers have figured out just what we should be looking for, using the increasingly sophisticated technologies being developed.