Join us this month as we explore this scientific process of gathering new data and formulating new ideas.

Join us this month to observe a rare transit of Venus, just like the 1769 transit observed by Captain Cook, and learn more about how distant worlds are being discovered through the Kepler and other missions.

Join us this month as we explore one of the most fundamental questions: are we alone in the Universe?

Join us this month as we explore ice and its properties, where it is located, and what it tells us about the planets and moons in our solar system. We will join the Earth Day celebrations this month! Check out the classroom and informal activities, resources, and further information.

We have an intimate relationship with our sun. Its light and gravity profoundly affect our planet's motions, weather, oceans, and life, as well as all other objects in our solar system.

Join us this month, as we celebrate National Engineers Week, and explore the variety of robotic spacecraft in our solar system!

Like people, planets grow old. They start out full of energy, but over billions of years, they change. Instead of losing their hair, planets can lose their atmospheres and oceans. Instead of wrinkles, they may gather craters. And rather than becoming frail, planets cool and shrink, becoming more dense as they move into their senior years.

Like people, planets grow old. They start out full of energy, but over billions of years, they change. Instead of losing their hair, planets can lose their atmospheres and oceans. Instead of wrinkles, they may gather craters. And rather than becoming frail, planets cool and shrink, becoming more dense as they move into their senior years.

Join us this month to investigate magnetic fields and planetary magnetospheres, through a variety of activities and mission resources. We will also celebrate the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory on its way to deliver the rover Curiosity to the surface of the red planet!

We find beauty in the night sky. Objects that attract the most attention include our brilliant Moon, and Saturn with its delicate rings. Our attraction to these objects has led many to study them in greater detail, and discover the beauty in scientific exploration.

Gravity is the powerful force that glues our universe together. It's a weighty topic; join us to tackle it together!

Got air? Many of the planets in our solar system have significant atmospheres, but none are breathable to us except our own Earth's. But the weather systems on other planets can help us to better understand our own world.

When we build things, there are often building materials left over. Asteroids are bits of building material remaining from the formation of our solar system. This month the Year of the Solar System focuses on these rocky remains. July marks the arrival of NASA's Dawn mission at Vesta, the first of the two worlds in the asteroid belt that Dawn will explore.

Collisions are at the core of solar system formation, and continue to be one of the most important processes throughout our solar system. These impacts tell the story of our solar system's formation -- and how planets and their moons continued to change since those early days.

There is plenty of hot stuff in our solar system, even in the outer frozen realms; so much that planetary scientists have found evidence of volcanism on every terrestrial planet and on many of the moons and even some asteroids!

Planetary scientists once thought Earth was an oasis in a dry solar system, as early missions to our neighbors revealed desert-like conditions on the Moon, Mars, and Mercury. Robotic missions in recent years have overturned our view of a dry solar system, returning mounting evidence of ample water from a vast array of locations.

Our ancestors built bridges to the sky with careful observations of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars. Today, our robotic bridges reach much further. This month we celebrate the history of observations and Sun-Earth Day!

Some of the smallest bodies in our solar system have had the biggest impact on our understanding of how the solar system formed. Join NASA's exploration of these curious members of our solar system.

Join NASA during December and January in investigations of our planetary family tree. Observe the total lunar eclipse in December or simply note the change in lunar phases over the course of a month. Attend an observing session and view Jupiter through a telescope this month. There are so many opportunities for you to find out more about our solar system's family tree!

Our world's birth story is intertwined with that of its family -- the Earth formed along with the rest of our solar system, 4.5 billion years ago. As we continue to study the planets in our solar system and in far away planetary systems, we are filling in the picture of our own planet's birth. NASA's Year of the Solar System missions will shed new light on the solar system family's birth story, as planetary data and scientific computer models change our views of how our solar system formed.

This month focuses on some solar system basics and introduces the Year of the Solar System -- 23 months (or a Martian year) of events, activities and resources to bring the solar system down to Earth. You are invited to participate in a walk through a scale model of a solar system and to learn about the places along the way. You will also find resources for basic information about the objects in our solar system.