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Mars is the only other planet to have had its surface explored by a mobile surface probe (rover). Titan is the only non-planetary object of planetary mass to have been explored by lander. Landers have explored several smaller bodies including 433 Eros (2001), 25143 Itokawa (2005), Tempel 1 (2005), 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (2014), 162173 ...
In addition to analyzing mass-radius relationships of planets, researchers also look to the composition of a planet's host star when hypothesizing a planet's interior composition. This is because planets and their host stars originate from the same system, so they share the same material from the accretion disk. [6] [7] Although planets will ...
A type of solid planet with an icy surface of volatiles. In the Solar System, most planetary-mass moons (such as Titan, Triton, and Enceladus) and many dwarf planets (such as Pluto and Eris) have such a composition. Europa is sometimes considered an icy planet due to its surface ice, but its higher density indicates that its interior is mostly ...
A class of extrasolar planets whose characteristics are similar to Jupiter, but that have high surface temperatures because they orbit very close—between approximately 0.015 and 0.5 AU (2.2 × 10 ^ 6 and 74.8 × 10 ^ 6 km)—to their parent stars, whereas Jupiter orbits its parent star (the Sun) at 5.2 AU (780 × 10 ^ 6 km), causing low ...
Tidally locked planets (a.k.a. "eyeball" planets [195]) can be habitable closer to their star than previously thought due to the effect of clouds: at high stellar flux, strong convection produces thick water clouds near the substellar point that greatly increase the planetary albedo and reduce surface temperatures. [196] Planets in the ...
The structure of rocky planets is constrained by the average density of a planet and its moment of inertia. [15] The moment of inertia for a differentiated planet is less than 0.4, because the density of the planet is concentrated in the center. [16] Mercury has a moment of inertia of 0.346, which is evidence for a core. [17]
The source could be Venusian water, that the ultraviolet radiation from the Sun splits into its basic composition. There is also deuterium in the planet's atmosphere, a heavy type of hydrogen that is less capable of escaping the planet's gravity. However, the surface water may have been only atmospheric and not form any oceans. [10]
The smallest known extrasolar planet that is likely a "gas planet" is Kepler-138d, which has the same mass as Earth but is 60% larger and therefore has a density that indicates a thick gas envelope. [16] A low-mass gas planet can still have a radius resembling that of a gas giant if it has the right temperature. [17]