Planetary Science Decadal Survey Mission Studies Lessons Learned Report

This mosaic strip – extending across the hemisphere that faced the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015 – now includes all of the highest-resolution images tak...

Various observations of Pluto over the course of several decades.

This NASA poster set showcases the beauty of our solar system and beyond.

More tradition than superstition, “lucky peanuts” are a fixture at major deep space mission events since 1964.

Bennu and other asteroids represent building blocks of our solar system’s rocky planets. 

Scientists think Bennu is part of a larger body that broke apart. This artist’s concept shows that event. 

This artist’s concept shows the OSIRIS-REx mission returning a sample from Bennu to Earth.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission will be approaching Bennu.

This artist’s concept shows the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collecting a sample from Bennu. 

Learning what Jupiter is made of and how it works will tell us more about the rest of the solar system and our own planet, Earth.

Aram Chaos lies within a 280 kilometer-diameter ancient impact crater in the Southern Highlands of Mars. Uplifted blocks of light-toned layers, composed largely of the iron-oxide hematite and water...

This image of Occator Crater's northern wall was obtained by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on June 16, 2018 from an altitude of about 21 miles (33 kilometers).

Actual images of the July 4, 2005 impact of the Deep Impact probe into comet Tempel 1.

This animation demonstrates how deformation in the icy surface of Europa could transport subsurface ocean water to the moon’s surface.

This mosaic of a prominent mound located on the western side of Cerealia Facula was obtained by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on June 22, 2018 from an altitude of about 21 miles (34 kilometers).

This image of Jupiter's southern hemisphere was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft on the outbound leg of a close flyby of the gas-giant planet.

Map projection of Charon, the largest of Pluto's five moons, annotated with its first set of official feature names.

NASA's New Horizons captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Charon just before closest approach on July 14, 2015. 

Jim Christy points to the photographic plate on which he and a colleague discovered Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, in 1978.

This image captures swirling cloud belts and tumultuous vortices within Jupiter’s northern hemisphere. 

This image captures the intensity of the jets and vortices in Jupiter’s North North Temperate Belt. 

A 1909 VDB penny sent to Mars aboard the Curiosity rover as part of an image calibration target (and a nod to a geology tradition of using a coin for scale). 

Pluto's strange shape in this fuzzy 1978 telescope image led to the discovery of its companion moon, Charon.

A comparison image shows how Martian winds help clean the Opportunity rover's solar panels over three months in 2014. 

An Atlas-Centaur launches Mariner 9 toward Mars from Cape Kennedy's Launch Complex 36B.