A 3D adventure through our cosmic neighborhood with NASA
3...2...1... Liftoff!
Get to know your solar system
Start at the heart
The sun at the center of it all
Revolving Around Our Star for 4.571 Billion Years
This is the story of the Solar System, from the beginning to the end
The Beginning — 4.5 Billion Years Ago
Everything around you began, originally, in a molecular cloud like the one pictured here.
A molecular cloud is a loose collection of gas and dust, one that is cold enough for molecules to be able to form. They are mostly made up of hydrogen gas.
Making a Star
Over time, gravity causes parts of these clouds to collapse. The clumps get denser and hotter, attracting even more material from the cloud, until finally their cores reach the conditions required to begin nuclear fusion—the power source of all stars.
Orion
We can watch this happening in the Orion Nebula. The bright clumps on the right are regions where gigantic, massive stars are forming. The clump that became our Solar System was about 20,000 times as big as the current distance between the Earth and the Sun.
A Closer Look At The Orion Nebula
It was in a place like this that our Sun formed, surrounded by many other stars. Over hundreds of millions of years, these stars drifted apart, leaving little evidence of their original crowding.
Ignition
As a star turns on, it continues to attract dust and gas. Some falls onto the star, but other bits collect into a disk that rotates around it instead. At the same time, the star's magnetic field channels some particles through powerful jets from either north/south pole.
A Planet Crucible
Once the cloud clears, some dust and gas remains leftover in the disk. Its continuous orbit keeps it from drifting into the star, like how a satellite is always falling around the Earth.
Out of this disk, planets form.
Enter: Planets
Though the dust in this disk is only about a billionth of a meter large to begin with, over thousands of years it coagulates into dust bunnies, then pebbles, then boulders —and eventually, the building blocks of entire planets (called "protoplanets").
486958 Arrokoth
This faraway object, also known as "2014 MU69", is thought to be a leftover of the primitive building blocks that glommed together to form the rocky cores of planets.
Diverging Paths
Depending where and when a planet begins forming, it can end up big or small. It can be made of rock or ice or gas, or some combination of the three. It can end up anywhere between an orbit so far away that it takes centuries, or one so close that it takes less than a day.
Over time, the gas and dust in the disk falls into the star or gets blown away. In several million years, it's gone, leaving behind asteroids, comets, and protoplanets.
In the Solar System, Uranus and Neptune may have formed last, just as the disk faded away.
The Chaotic Era
At this point, the Solar System went through a period of instability that lasted about a hundred million years. Some protoplanets smashed into each other, like the impact that formed the Earth's moon. Others may have been ejected out of the Solar System entirely.
Haumea
The dwarf planet Haumea, which orbits the Sun from a distance far past Neptune, is thought to have formed through the kind of giant collision that reshaped our Solar System so much.
Moon-making
In this chaotic time, some planets captured others into their orbit, gaining moons. Others had already formed moons early on, from orbiting disks like miniature versions of the one that had surrounded the Sun.
Asteroids Incoming
Most scientists agree that about 500 million years after the Solar System formed, Jupiter began migrating closer to the Sun. Its gravitational influence disturbed the asteroid belt and launched many rocks toward the inner planets, including the Earth.
A Shove From Jupiter
One popular theory says that as Jupiter moved, it eventually interacted with Saturn's orbit, causing a major gravitational disturbance that pushed Uranus and Neptune farther out from the Sun and even switched their order.
The "Final" Product
That brings us to today.
But the Solar System isn't done evolving.
Collision Course?
The orbits of all the planets are stable in the near-term. But there is a small chance that within the next billion years, Mercury's orbit could get more and more oblong until it eventually smashes into Venus or the Earth.
In several billion years, Mars could do the same.
But by then...
...the Sun will have already made life (and water) on Earth's surface hard to sustain. In a billion years, it'll be too hot.
And as the Sun exhausts the hydrogen it fuses for energy, it will expand, eventually swallowing Mercury. It may also consume Venus and the Earth — some calculations point to yes, others say no.
On the bright side, temperatures will rise enough in the outer Solar System that those planets could become more habitable.
But their days will be numbered as well.
Boom.
In about 5 billion years, the Sun will exhaust all its fuel and collapse in on itself. The sun isn't massive enough to go supernova or become a black hole, but the collapse will cause an explosion that either destroys any of the remaining planets or ejects them out into space.
Another Kind Of Nebula
The Solar System will then be a "planetary nebula" —a misleading name, since the planets will all be gone. The Sun will have lost about half its mass, and will continue to shine as a small, hot white dwarf.
The End?
But the surrounding nebula will dissipate in mere thousands of years. Most of what used to be the Solar System will be scattered into space.
Maybe, one day, some of the remains will enrich another star, or another planet, or maybe even another form of life.
First stop... Mercury
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The smallest planet in the Solar System and the closest to the Sun
Earth's toxic twin
Explore Venus, the second planet in the solar system
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Take the Earth's twin for a spin
A quick pitstop at home
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Our home in the stars
Hold our planet in the palm of your hand
Play this puzzle of our planet from space
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Spot the ISS on your way past
Your seat on the International Space Station
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The Space Station in 3D
To the moon and back
Learn all about Earth's moon
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Over the Moon in 3D
Next stop: the red planet
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Our closest cosmic neighbor
Is there life on Mars?
Explore the Mars Rover and the Red Planet
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The Mars Perseverance Rover
Explore it in 3D
The biggest planet comes into view...
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Jupiter: the Gas Giant
The kings of the Solar System
Take a ring around the "Ringed Planet"
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Saturn in 3D
Meet Saturn's moons
Where Oceans, Impacts, and Mysteries Reign
Next up: Uranus
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The planet with diamond rain
The ice giant
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Neptune
Dark, cold, and whipped by supersonic winds