and became the first human-made spacecraft to orbit an outer planet. Speed-wise, Galileo was massively impressive, and one of its probes traveled at 106,000 mph while exploring Jupiter's atmosphere.

Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI illustration Zooming through the outer reaches of the solar system, A NASA spacecraft just clocked ... to meddle with conventional ideas about how the solar system ...

“There were lots of good ideas for how to do things ... than could Voyager 1 and 2. The spacecraft is thought to be in a “desert” between an inner and outer Kuiper Belt region, in which ...

But sending spacecraft to scout extraterrestrial seas is neither trivial nor for the impatient. Voyages to the outer solar system ... about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

The spacecraft will then use Mars as a slingshot to get itself to the outer solar system. At this point, the travel time will be years. Eventually, we have made it to Jupiter, and once the ...

A project from UCLA's Artur Davoyan, meanwhile, could speed up missions to the outer edge of the Solar System and even interstellar space. His design (shown at middle) would propel spacecraft by ...

The scientists on Earth were therefore ecstatic when Huygens, now the first spacecraft to land in the outer solar system, continued transmissions for another three hours and 10 minutes ...