Worlds of the Solar System

Celestial Bodies

Planets, moons, dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets — the worlds our missions explore.

71 worlds17 types9 moons

71 bodies

Star

2 missions

Sun

The G-type main-sequence star at the gravitational center of the Solar System.

The only known world with liquid water oceans and life — the benchmark against which we measure every other planet.

The largest planet — a hydrogen-helium gas giant with 95 confirmed moons and the Great Red Spot.

The cold, arid fourth planet — the most-visited world beyond Earth and a primary target for human spaceflight.

The smallest planet and the closest to the Sun — a cratered, airless world of extremes.

The windy outer ice giant — the first planet found by mathematical prediction, host to the geyser-moon Triton.

The ringed jewel — a gas giant encircled by the most spectacular ring system in the Solar System and 146 moons.

The tilted ice giant — a cold world rolling on its side with faint rings and 28 moons.

Earth's scorched twin — cloaked in sulfuric acid clouds and a runaway greenhouse.

The largest object in the asteroid belt — a dwarf planet with possible briny water beneath its surface.

The most-massive known dwarf planet — discovery triggered Pluto's demotion.

A rugby-ball-shaped dwarf planet with two moons and a ring — one of the strangest bodies known.

A frozen methane world in the outer Kuiper Belt with a tiny dark moon.

The first-discovered and most famous dwarf planet — a complex binary world of nitrogen glaciers and red organic haze.

The brightest and seemingly youngest of Uranus's major moons — crossed by a network of rift valleys.

The most heavily cratered object in the Solar System — an ancient, barely-differentiated ice-rock world.

Pluto's giant companion — half Pluto's diameter, tidally locked into a true binary dwarf-planet system.

The smaller, smoother moon of Mars — a likely captured asteroid drifting slowly outward.

Icy moon with striking bright "wispy" ice cliffs and a possible subsurface ocean.

A tiny icy moon with geysers of salty water from a subsurface ocean — one of the best places in the Solar System to look for life.

An ice-crusted ocean moon — one of the Solar System's prime candidates for extraterrestrial life.

The largest moon in the Solar System — larger than Mercury, and the only moon with its own magnetic field.

The chaotic sponge-moon — an irregular, porous body that tumbles unpredictably.

The two-toned "yin-yang" moon — one hemisphere as dark as asphalt, the other brilliant white.

The most volcanically active world in the Solar System — a sulfur-painted moon locked in tidal battle with Jupiter.

The "Death Star moon" — a small icy world marked by the enormous crater Herschel.

A patchwork moon of coronae and cliffs — the innermost and most dramatic of Uranus's five major satellites.

Earth's only natural satellite — the only world beyond Earth where humans have walked.

A small outer moon of Neptune with one of the most eccentric orbits of any known moon.

The outermost major moon of Uranus — heavily cratered and likely harboring a thin deep ocean.

The larger, doomed moon of Mars — spiraling inward and likely to be shredded into a ring within 100 million years.

The captured Centaur — a retrograde, distant outer moon that supplies the dust painting Iapetus.

Neptune's second-largest moon — a dark, irregular body discovered by Voyager 2.

Saturn's second-largest moon — a heavily cratered ice world with a tenuous oxygen exosphere.

Low-density icy moon with the giant crater Odysseus and the enormous rift Ithaca Chasma.

The only moon with a thick atmosphere and surface liquids — methane rivers and seas under an orange haze.

The largest moon of Uranus — crossed by enormous canyons and possibly hosting a subsurface ocean.

Neptune's captured Kuiper Belt giant — the only large moon in a retrograde orbit, with active nitrogen geysers.

The dark, ancient, heavily cratered Uranian moon with the enigmatic Wunda crater.

A Near-Earth asteroid that will pass closer than geostationary satellites on 13 April 2029.

A carbon-rich Near-Earth asteroid — OSIRIS-REx returned 121.6 g of samples to Earth in 2023.

The primary of a binary asteroid system — target of NASA's DART planetary-defense test.

The asteroid moonlet struck by NASA DART — the first object whose orbit has been changed by humans.

The first asteroid orbited and landed on by a spacecraft.

The first asteroid ever visited by a spacecraft — Galileo flyby, October 1991.

The first asteroid discovered to have a moon — Dactyl — photographed by Galileo in 1993.

A rubble-pile NEO — the first asteroid from which samples were returned to Earth.

A large main-belt asteroid flown past by Rosetta in 2010 — possibly a primitive protoplanet survivor.

The third-largest main-belt asteroid — highly inclined, rich in water.

A metal-rich asteroid that may be the exposed iron core of an ancient protoplanet — target of NASA's Psyche mission.

A C-type near-Earth asteroid — Hayabusa2 returned 5.4 g of pristine samples in 2020.

The second-largest main-belt asteroid — a differentiated protoplanet with a giant south-polar scar.

2.36 AU263 km

Comet

ORBITS SUN

67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

The first comet to be orbited and landed on by a spacecraft — ESA Rosetta + Philae.

The "Great Comet of 1997" — one of the brightest, longest-visible comets of modern times.

The most famous comet — the first periodic comet recognized; next perihelion 2061.

The brightest comet to grace northern-hemisphere skies since Hale-Bopp.

The comet that collided with Jupiter in 1994 — the first Solar System collision directly observed.

Comet

ORBITS SUN

Tempel 1

The comet struck by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft in 2005 — then revisited by Stardust-NExT.

The first comet from which samples were returned to Earth — NASA's Stardust, 2006.

The most distant object ever visited by spacecraft — a contact-binary cold classical KBO.

A distant red dwarf-planet candidate with a single moon — Xiangliu.

The "anti-Pluto" — a plutino in the same 2:3 resonance but 180° out of phase.

A cubewano with two rings — the first ring system found around a body outside the giant-planet region.

43.69 AU555 km

Trans-Neptunian Object

ORBITS SUN

Sedna

An extreme trans-Neptunian object with a 10,000-year orbit — possibly a first member of the inner Oort Cloud.

506 AU498 km

Interstellar Object

2I/Borisov

The first confirmed interstellar comet — a normal-looking visitor from another star system.

-0.85 AU1 km

Interstellar Object

Oumuamua

The first confirmed interstellar object to pass through the Solar System — detected October 2017.

-1.28 AU0 km

Space Launch Live maintains a complete, accurate catalog of every major object in our solar system — the Sun, all eight planets, every major moon, all five IAU-recognized dwarf planets, notable asteroids, comets, Kuiper Belt Objects, and the two confirmed interstellar visitors. Each body includes verified physical and orbital data from the NASA NSSDC Planetary Fact Sheets, JPL Horizons, and the IAU Minor Planet Center, plus cross-links to every probe, rover, lander, and satellite tracked on the site.

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