Across the solar system

Across the solar system, 1973 to 2024: Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and its moons, Saturn, Pluto and two asteroids, seen by the robotic missions sent to them. From Pioneer 10 at Jupiter to a sample of the asteroid Bennu brought home.

19 photographs · 1973 to 2024 · Mission 14 of 14
19 photographs
Caloris basin on Mercury in enhanced colour, MESSENGER, 25 February 2015
MESSENGER · 25 February 2015PIA19216

Mercury Is Not Grey

Every shade is a different mineral. The bullseye is a basin 960 miles across.
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Venus clouds in ultraviolet light, Mariner 10, February 1974
Mariner 10 · February 1974

Clouds You Cannot See

To the eye, Venus is a blank pale disc. Only in ultraviolet do its clouds appear at all.
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The OSIRIS-REx sampling head with dust and stones from Bennu, OSIRIS-REx, 17 January 2024
OSIRIS-REx · 17 January 2024JSC2024E006057

The Asteroid Under the Lid

Two of its 35 fasteners would not come off until the team made new tools for them.
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Asteroid Ida with its moon, Galileo, 28 August 1993
Galileo · 28 August 1993PIA00136

The First Asteroid Moon

Nobody saw it in 1993. It sat inside the photograph for months before anyone noticed.
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Jupiter's southern cloud belts and a cyclone, Juno, 16 December 2017
Juno · 16 December 2017PIA21974

Where Jupiter Curves Away

NASA posts Juno's raw frames online. A member of the public turned this one into a photograph.
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Cyclones circling Jupiter's south pole, Juno, 25 May 2017
Juno · 25 May 2017PIA21641

Six Storms at the Pole

Five cyclones turn around a sixth that sits on the pole itself. The largest run to about six hundred miles across.
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Saturn from Pioneer 11, Pioneer 11, 26 August 1979
Pioneer 11 · 26 August 1979AC79-9107

A Path for Voyager

Given the choice, the mission gave up the better science and flew the safe route, so that the Voyagers could follow it.
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Cratered surface of Mercury, Mariner 10, 29 March 1974
Mariner 10 · 29 March 1974PIA03103

Mercury at First Sight

The bright speck near the top is a crater named for a man who died three months before the spacecraft arrived.
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Earth above the lunar horizon, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, 12 October 2015
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter · 12 October 2015GSFC_20171208_ARCHIVE_E000496

The Sahara from the Moon

Captured from lunar orbit by a spacecraft that had to be rolled sixty seven degrees onto its side to see it at all.
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Sampling head touching the surface of Bennu, OSIRIS-REx, 20 October 2020
OSIRIS-REx · 20 October 2020

Touching an Asteroid

Contact lasted about six seconds. Most of the sample came up in the first three.
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Pluto in enhanced colour, New Horizons, 14 July 2015
New Horizons · 14 July 2015PIA19952

The Dot Became a World

From its discovery in 1930 until July 2015 Pluto was a point of light and nothing else.
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Jupiter's moon Europa and its fractured ice crust, Galileo, 21 November 2014
Galileo · 21 November 2014PIA19048

More Water Than Earth

Under this shell of ice, scientists believe, there is a single global ocean.
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Ice cells of Sputnik Planitia on Pluto, New Horizons, 14 July 2015
New Horizons · 14 July 2015PIA20726

Ice That Turns Over

There is not one impact crater in this part of Pluto. The ground is too new to have kept any.
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The asteroid Bennu covered in boulders, OSIRIS-REx, 2 December 2018
OSIRIS-REx · 2 December 2018

Held Together by Gravity

Bennu is about a third of a mile wide, and every six years it passes Earth closer than the Moon does.
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Asteroid sample capsule on the ground in Utah, OSIRIS-REx, 24 September 2023
OSIRIS-REx · 24 September 2023NHQ202309240003

Asteroid Dust Comes Home

The capsule was let go 63,000 miles out and was on the ground ten minutes after it met the air.
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Jupiter and one of its moons, Pioneer 10, December 1973
Pioneer 10 · December 1973AC73-9253

Two Days from Jupiter

Bolted to the spacecraft that captured it was a gold plaque, in case anything ever found it.
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Great Red Spot and the String of Pearls storms, Juno, 11 December 2016
Juno · 11 December 2016PIA21376

The String of Pearls

The white ovals below the Great Red Spot are storms of their own, and the mission team named them.
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Pop up clouds over Jupiter's northern hemisphere, Juno, 29 May 2019
Juno · 29 May 2019PIA22949

Jupiter's Stormy North

The person who turned the raw data into this image does not work for NASA.
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The planet Mercury in enhanced colour, MESSENGER, 15 February 2013
MESSENGER · 15 February 2013PIA16850

The Whole of Mercury

MESSENGER mapped more than 99 percent of the planet in colour. Mariner 10, forty years earlier, had imaged less than half of it.
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Across the solar system, 1973 to 2024: Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and its moons, Saturn, Pluto and two asteroids, seen by the robotic missions sent to them. From Pioneer 10 at Jupiter to a sample of the asteroid Bennu brought home.

19 photographs · 1973 to 2024 · Mission 14 of 14
About Across the solar system

This collection holds the robotic missions to the planets, moons and asteroids that do not have a collection of their own. Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter in December 1973 and Pioneer 11 passed Saturn in 1979. Mariner 10 photographed Venus and Mercury in 1974, Galileo found the first known moon of an asteroid in 1993, and New Horizons flew past Pluto on 14 July 2015. Juno’s views of Jupiter’s poles, and OSIRIS-REx, which touched the asteroid Bennu and brought a sample home in September 2023, bring it up to date. Earth over the Moon from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is here too.