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Irregular moons are probably minor planets that have been captured from surrounding space. Most irregular moons are less than 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) in diameter. The earliest published discovery of a moon other than Earth's was by Galileo Galilei, who discovered the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610. Over the following three ...
Today, we know a lot more about Earth's natural satellite. Phases of the moon. The moon takes about 30 days to orbit the Earth, which is called a lunar cycle. Each lunar cycle is divided into ...
The seven largest natural satellites in the Solar System (those bigger than 2,500 km across) are Jupiter's Galilean moons (Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa), Saturn's moon Titan, Earth's moon, and Neptune's captured natural satellite Triton. Triton, the smallest of these, has more mass than all smaller natural satellites together.
Solar System space probes operational as of November 2024. This is a list of active space probes which have escaped Earth orbit. It includes lunar space probes, but does not include space probes orbiting at the Sun–Earth Lagrangian points (for these, see List of objects at Lagrangian points). A craft is deemed "active" if it is still able to ...
Both moons, which bring the total of Neptune’s known natural satellites to 18, were first spotted in September 2021, but required follow-up observations with different telescopes over the past ...
The known icy moons in this range are all ellipsoidal (except Proteus), but trans-Neptunian objects up to 450–500 km radius may be quite porous. [10] For simplicity and comparative purposes, the values are manually calculated assuming that the bodies are all spheres. The size of solid bodies does not include an object's atmosphere.
Earth–Moon L 2: CNSA: Launched on 23 October 2014, arrived at L 2 halo orbit on 13 January 2015. [2] Queqiao: Earth–Moon L 2: CNSA: Launched on 21 May 2018, arrived at L 2 halo orbit on June 14 for Chang'e 4 mission. [38] Queqiao is the first ever communication relay and radio astronomy satellite at operating its location. [39] Spektr-RG ...
Alan Stern calls these satellite planets, although the term major moon is more common. The smallest natural satellite that is gravitationally rounded is Saturn I Mimas (radius 198.2 ± 0.4 km). This is smaller than the largest natural satellite that is known not to be gravitationally rounded, Neptune VIII Proteus (radius 210 ± 7 km).