Planetary Highlights
In our tour through the solar system so far we have focused on the big picture, such as the composition, the scale and the major divisions of the planets. We have not examined any individual planets in detail. In the following modules we will be visiting some planets repeatedly, each time with a focus on some particular aspect that we are discussing (e.g. water, possibility of life). Before we do so, it seems useful to take a brief look at each individual planet to provide an overview of that world. We think of this as the planetary highlights.
To be consistent, we will take our information from this Nasa Solar System exploration site, which also has an image of the day and highlights new information. In addition, the site also contains information and links to all missions in the solar system and on some of the people behind the missions. We believe that an important aspect of understanding the evolution of planetary science is to understand the evolution of our missions to the planets. In some of your assignments you will be asked to research some aspects of these missions.
To keep the key information within this ebook, we have reproduced some of the information from that site here. You may want to refer back to these pages during future modules for a quick reference. Nevertheless, we suggest you bookmark solarsystem.nasa.gov in your browser.
Another reason to bookmark it is that in the assignment for this module, you will be asked to provide mission details for a number of solar system missions. Those details can be found at this site.
On to the planets!
