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Three of the probes, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and New Horizons are still functioning and are regularly contacted by radio communication, while Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 are now defunct. In addition to these spacecraft, some upper stages and de-spin weights are leaving the Solar System, assuming they continue on their trajectories.
Relative masses of the Solar planets. Jupiter at 71% of the total and Saturn at 21% dominate the system. Relative masses of the solid bodies of the Solar System. Earth at 48% and Venus at 39% dominate. Bodies less massive than Pluto are not visible at this scale. Relative masses of the rounded moons of the Solar System.
Contents. Formation and evolution of the Solar System. There is evidence that the formation of the Solar System began about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. [ 1 ] Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary ...
Solar System models, especially mechanical models, called orreries, that illustrate the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons in the Solar System have been built for centuries. While they often showed relative sizes, these models were usually not built to scale. The enormous ratio of interplanetary distances to planetary ...
The Solar System remains in a relatively stable, slowly evolving state by following isolated, gravitationally bound orbits around the Sun. [28] Although the Solar System has been fairly stable for billions of years, it is technically chaotic, and may eventually be disrupted. There is a small chance that another star will pass through the Solar ...
Terraforming. An artist's conception shows a terraformed Mars in four stages of development. Terraforming or terraformation ("Earth-shaping") is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet, moon, or other body to be similar to the environment of Earth to make it ...
The following is a list of Solar System objects by orbit, ordered by increasing distance from the Sun. Most named objects in this list have a diameter of 500 km or more. The Sun, a spectral class G2V main-sequence star. The inner Solar System and the terrestrial planets. Mercury. Mercury-crossing minor planets. Venus. Venus-crossing minor planets.
Makemake is a classical Kuiper belt object (KBO), [5] [b] which means its orbit lies far enough from Neptune to remain stable over the age of the Solar System. [45] [46] Unlike plutinos, which can cross Neptune's orbit due to their 2:3 resonance with the planet, the classical objects have perihelia further from the Sun, free from Neptune's ...