Billions of years from now, the Sun will swell into a red giant, swallowing Mercury, Venus, and Earth. But that’s not the ...

Spacecraft burn tons of fuel and leave behind debris—but a clever technique called aerobraking could fix both problems.

Simulations show that the stars’ tug could send Mercury, Venus or Mars crashing into Earth — or let Jupiter eject our world from the solar system.

The small world was found during a search for the hypothetical Planet Nine, and astronomers say the next time it will reach ...

Less than 1% of this dwarf planet candidate's orbit is close enough to detect, which means astronomers are lucky to have ...

Some recent spaceflight spectacles offer hints about what you might see if Kosmos 482 happens to fall through the sky above you.

An elliptical orbit is stretched ... aerobraking could save mass and allow each spacecraft headed to Mars to take more supplies. In the grand arc of space exploration, aerobraking is not just ...

Earth has four seasons, but do other planets in our solar system also have hot summer days and cold winter nights?

Kosmos-482, a failed mission to Venus from the former Soviet Union that stalled in Earth orbit in the 1970s, is about to fall back to our planet. Exactly where or when it will strike, however, remains ...

Kosmos 482 was part of the Soviet Union's storied Venera program of Venus exploration. The probe launched toward the second planet from the sun in 1972 but never got there; its rocket suffered an ...