Planets
The smallest planet in our solar system
Mercury
What are comets made of?
Frozen Gases, Rock, and Dust
NASA robotic spacecraft that has mapped the Moon
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
The fundamental force that clumps material together.
Gravity
Name the dwarf planets
Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris
Which planet appears to spin sideways?
Uranus
Largest of Neptune's 13 moons
Triton
Study Mercury's form, interior, structure, geology, composition and craters
BepiColombo
After a star forms, leftover gas and dust orbit it in a flattened, rotating disk.
Protoplanetary Disk
The largest volcano in the solar system
Olympus Mons
A large canyon system called Valles Marineris is on which Planet?
Mars
Comet the orbits the Sun within the asteroid belt
Tempel 1
Consisted of an orbiter, which was the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn, and a probe, which successfully landed on and transmitted data from the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan
Cassini-Huygens
What is Planetary Migration?
Planetary migration is the process where a planet's orbit changes from its formation location, driven by gravitational interactions with the surrounding protoplanetary disk or other planets
How are magnetic fields formed?
Planets generate magnetic fields through internal dynamos, powered by moving, electrically conductive fluids (like molten iron or metallic hydrogen)
Which planet is home to the satellites Enceladus and Titan?
Saturn
The peanut-shaped S-type asteroid
25143 Itokawa
NASA robotic mission that provided humanity's first close-up study of Pluto in 2015
New Horizons Spacecraft
What is Core accretion
A two-step process where small solid particles (planetesimals) first collide and stick together to form a massive rocky core, and once this core reaches a critical mass its gravity becomes strong enough to rapidly pull in a huge envelope of gas from the surrounding protoplanetary disk, creating a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn.
A young star in the constellation tarsus
HL Tauri
Europa is a moon of which planet?
Jupiter
A "snowman"-shaped object in the solar system
486958 Arrokoth
NASA mission that studied the protoplanets Vesta and Ceres in the asteroid belt
Dawn
What is Disk Instability?
A massive, rapidly cooling protoplanetary disk becomes gravitationally unstable, causing sections to fragment into planet-sized clumps.
What is HD 209458?
The first known extrasolar planet