Planets by NASA

In this page we have images of solar system objects taken by NASA, ESA and JAXA space crafts.

Below is the Sun.

Mercury by NASA Messenger

Venus with NASA and Rjussian space probes.  The Venera 13 and 14 landed on Venus year 1984. In the 400 degrees C heat they worked for 2 hours before breaking down.

Earth from Space

Mars with NASA and ISRO space probes.

Jupiter with NASA space probes

Below is Saturn with NASA Cassini space probe. Saturn's moon Titan has a thick atmosphere consisting nitrogen and methane. On surface there is methane lakes in -180 degrees Celsius temperature. Titan is the largest moon in the solar system. Diameter is 5152 kilometers. Titan may have liquid water underground. Saturns moon Enceladus has geysers, which spill out water into space. So there is liquid water under ice cover. Diameter is 500 kilometers. Methone is surprisingly smooth to be a small moon (diameter 3km). Saturn has 62 moons. The Cassini space probe by NASA and ESA has circulated Saturn for Years and its Huygens lander landed on surface of Titan .

Saturns moon Iapetus has one side very dark and the other side bright. Diameter is 1492 kilometers. On equator Iapetus has 13 kilometers high mountains going round the moon 

Uranus has 27 moons; in image below are Ariel, Titania ja Oberon. Neptune has 14 moons; in image below Triton 

Pluto has 5 moons: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Styx and Kerberos. The size of pluto is 2370 kilometers. Pluto has a large moon Charon, diameter 1200 kilometers. In addition Pluto has 4 smaller moons. Size of Hydra is 45 kilometers and Nix is 42 kilometers. Space probe New Horizons by NASA made a Pluto flyby in July 2015. Surprise is that the surface features on Pluto and Charon seem to be fresh, possibly only 100 million years old. Temperature at Pluto surface is -229 degrees Celcius. The fresh surface may consist of nitrogen ice, carbon dioxide ice and water ice. The sky of Pluto is blue 

Below is comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko by ESA Rosetta space probe and comet Hartley. Philae by ESA landed on Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta has observed also Oxygen and Methane coming out from this comet 

Ceres has interesting white areas in one crater, named Occator. One possibility is that Ceres has liquid salty water under surface and here it leaks into surface. Images by NASA Dawn. 

NASA Artemis launch from Kennedy Space Center 16th of November 2022

NASA Artemis 1 lift-off from Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral. Images are screenshots of a video taken 16th of November 2022 from Orlando, Florida USA, by Tiina Rabb. The unmanned Artemis 1 is the first integrated flight test of NASA’s deep space exploration system: the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. It will orbit around the Moon and leave 10 satellites around the Moon. Landing back to Earth, Pacific Ocean, is 11th of December 2022. Entry speed to Earth atmosphere is 11 km/s. Later Artemis missions are manned.

Below are images from Kennedy Space Center by Tiina on her visit there 17th of November 2022.