ADVANCEMENT OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

The solar system is made up of the sun and everything that orbits around it, including
planets, moons, asteroids, comets and meteoroids. It extends from the sun, called Sol
by the ancient Romans, and goes past the four inner planets, through the Asteroid Belt
to the four gas giants and on to the disk-shaped Kuiper Belt and far beyond to the
teardrop-shaped heliopause. Scientists estimate that the edge of the solar system is
about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) from the sun. Beyond the heliopause lies the
giant, spherical Oort Cloud, which is thought to surround the solar system.

Discovery
For millennia, astronomers have followed points of light that seemed to move among
the stars. The ancient Greeks named them planets, meaning "wanderers." Mercury,
Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were known in antiquity, and the invention of the
telescope added the Asteroid Belt, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and many of these worlds'
moons. The dawn of the space age saw dozens of probes launched to explore our
system, an adventure that continues today. Only one spacecraft so far, Voyager 1, has
crossed the threshold into interstellar space.

The discovery of Eris kicked off a rash of new discoveries of dwarf planets, and
eventually led to the International Astronomical Union revising the definition of a
"planet." The revision changed Pluto's status from planet to dwarf planet in 2006, a
decision that remains controversial – especially after the New Horizons mission found
immense geological variety on the world in 2015. [Infographic: Structure of the Solar
System]
Astronomers are now hunting for another planet in our solar system, a true ninth planet,
after evidence of its existence was unveiled on Jan. 20, 2016. The so-called "Planet
Nine," as scientists are calling it, is about 10 times the mass of Earth and 5,000 times
the mass of Pluto.
Formation
Many scientists think our solar system formed from a giant, rotating cloud of gas and
dust known as the solar nebula. As the nebula collapsed because of its gravity, it spun
faster and flattened into a disk. Most of the material was pulled toward the center to
form the sun. Other particles within the disk collided and stuck together to form asteroid-
sized objects named as planetesimals, some of which combined to become the
asteroids, comets, moons and planets.
The solar wind from the sun was so powerful that it swept away most of the lighter
elements, such as hydrogen and helium, from the innermost planets, leaving behind
mostly small, rocky worlds. The solar wind was much weaker in the outer regions,
however, resulting in gas giants made up mostly of hydrogen and helium.

The sun
The sun is by far the largest object in our solar system, containing 99.8 percent of the
solar system's mass. It sheds most of the heat and light that makes life possible on
Earth and possibly elsewhere. Planets orbit the sun in oval-shaped paths called
ellipses, with the sun slightly off-center of each ellipse. NASA has a fleet of spacecraft
observing the sun to learn more about its composition, and to make better predictions
about solar activity and its effect on Earth.
Inner solar system
The four inner four planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars — are made up mostly of
iron and rock. They are known as terrestrial or earthlike planets because of their similar
size and composition. Earth has one natural satellite — the moon — and Mars has two
moons — Deimos and Phobos.
Between Mars and Jupiter lies the Asteroid Belt. Asteroids are minor planets, and
scientists estimate there are more than 750,000 of them with diameters larger than
three-fifths of a mile (1 km) and millions of smaller asteroids. The dwarf planet Ceres,
about 590 miles (950 km) in diameter, resides here. A number of asteroids have orbits
that take them closer into the solar system that sometimes lead them to collide with
Earth or the other inner planets.
Earth is surrounded by a flotilla of spacecraft, and Mars has been visited by many
spacecraft as well. Some of the more prominent Martian missions include the Curiosity
rover, the Opportunity and Spirit rovers, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (which takes
high-resolution pictures from orbit), and the Viking landers and rovers. Venus has been
explored by American, European and Soviet spacecraft over the decades. Mercury has
been host to several flybys and two-long term missions: MESSENGER (now concluded)
and BepiColombo (expected to launch in 2018).

Outer solar system

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The outer planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — are giant worlds with thick
outer layers of gas. Between these planets, they have dozens of moons with a variety of
compositions, ranging from rocky to icy to even volcanic (such as in the case of Jupiter's
Io.) Nearly all the planets' mass is made up of hydrogen and helium, giving them
compositions like that of the sun. Beneath these outer layers, they have no solid
surfaces — the pressure from their thick atmospheres liquefy their insides, although
they might have rocky cores. Rings of dust, rock, and ice encircle all these giants, with
Saturn's being the most famous.
Comets are often known as dirty snowballs, and consist mainly of ice and rock. When a
comet's orbit takes it close to the sun, some of the ice in its central nucleus turns into
gas that shoots out of the comet's sunlit side, which the solar wind carries outward to
form into a long tail. Short-period comets that complete their orbits in less than 200
years are thought to originate from the disk-shaped Kuiper Belt, while long-period
comets that take more than 200 years to return are thought to come from the
spherical Oort Cloud.
Jupiter and Saturn have each been visited by several spacecraft, and were also host to
long-term missions including Juno and Galileo at Jupiter, and Cassini at Saturn. Uranus
and Neptune, however, have only been seen during one spacecraft flyby — that of
Voyager 2 in the 1980s. Some scientists are working on creating a Uranus or Neptune
orbiter to fly there in the 2030s or so. Scientists do observations from the ground as
well, to track the long-term changes in weather and cloud formations in the gas giants.

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Trans-Neptunian region
Astronomers had long suspected that a band of icy material known as the Kuiper Belt
existed past the orbit of Neptune extending from about 30 to 55 times the distance of Earth
to the sun, and from the last decade of the 20th century up to now, they have found more
than a thousand of such objects. Scientists estimate the Kuiper Belt is likely home to
hundreds of thousands of icy bodies larger than 60 miles (100 km) wide, as well as an
estimated trillion or more comets.
Pluto, now considered a dwarf planet, dwells in the Kuiper Belt. It is not alone — recent
additions include Makemake, Haumea and Eris. Another Kuiper Belt object
dubbed Quaoar is probably massive enough to be considered a dwarf planet, but it has
not been classified as such yet. Sedna, which is about three-fourths the size of Pluto, is
the first dwarf planet discovered in the Oort Cloud. NASA's New Horizons mission
performed history's first flyby of the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, and continues to
explore the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons will fly by the object 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1,
2019. [Related: New Horizons' Pluto Flyby: Latest News, Images and Video]
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If Planet Nine exists, it orbits the sun at a distance that is 20 times farther out than the
orbit of Neptune. (The orbit of Neptune is 2.7 billion miles from the sun at its closest
point.) The strange world's orbit is about 600 times farther from the sun than the Earth's
orbit is from the star. Scientists have not actually seen Planet Nine directly, and some
astronomers debate its existence, which was inferred by its gravitational effects on other
objects in the Kuiper Belt.
Past the Kuiper Belt is the very edge of the solar system, the heliosphere, a vast,
teardrop-shaped region of space containing electrically charged particles given off by the
sun. Many astronomers think that the limit of the heliosphere, known as the heliopause,
is about 9 billion miles (15 billion km) from the sun.
The Oort Cloud lies well past the Kuiper Belt, and theoretically extends between 5 and
100,000 astronomical units (AU), the distance between the sun and Earth (about
93,000,000 miles or 150 million kilometers), and is home to up to 2 trillion icy bodies,
according to NASA.