The Mariner program was conducted by the American space agency NASA to explore other planets. Between 1962 and late 1973, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) designed and built 10 robotic interplanetary probes named Mariner to explore the inner Solar System - visiting the planets Venus, Mars and Mercury for the first time, and returning to Venus and Mars for additional close observations.
A planet is a large astronomical body that is neither a star nor a stellar remnant. There are competing scientific definitions of a 'planet'. In the dynamicist definition adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a planet is a non-stellar body that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, that directly orbits a star, and that has cleared its orbital zone of competing objects. The IAU has also declared that there are eight planets in the Solar System, independently of the formal definition. In the geological definition used by most planetologists, a planet is a rounded sub-stellar body, possibly a satellite. In addition to the eight Solar planets accepted by the IAU, these include dwarf planets such as Eris and Pluto and planetary-mass moons. Bodies meeting the geological definition are sometimes called "planetary-mass objects" or "planemos" for short.
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American science fiction writer called "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter known for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before the film went into production. She was the first woman shortlisted for the Hugo Award. In 2020, she won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as "Shadow Over Mars".
In astronomy, a conjunction occurs when two astronomical objects or spacecraft have either the same right ascension or the same ecliptic longitude, usually as observed from Earth. The astronomical symbol for conjunction is ☌ and handwritten . The conjunction symbol is not used in modern astronomy. It continues to be used in astrology.
In orbital mechanics and aerospace engineering, a gravitational slingshot, gravity assist maneuver, or swing-by is the use of the relative movement and gravity of a planet or other astronomical object to alter the path and speed of a spacecraft, typically to save propellant and reduce expense.
In astronomy, a transit is a phenomenon when a celestial body passes directly between a larger body and the observer. As viewed from a particular vantage point, the transiting body appears to move across the face of the larger body, covering a small portion of it.
In classical antiquity, the seven classical planets or seven luminaries are the seven moving astronomical objects in the sky visible to the naked eye: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The word planet comes from two related Greek words, πλάνης planēs and πλανήτης planētēs, both with the original meaning of "wanderer", expressing the fact that these objects move across the celestial sphere relative to the fixed stars. Greek astronomers such as Geminus and Ptolemy often divided the seven planets into the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets.
Frederik Pohl's Gateway is a 1992 interactive fiction video game released by Legend Entertainment, and written by Glen Dahlgren and Mike Verdu. It is based on Frederik Pohl's Heechee universe. It was followed by a sequel Gateway II: Homeworld, in 1993.
The Space Trilogy or Cosmic Trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by C. S. Lewis. A philologist named Elwin Ransom is the hero of the first two novels and an important character in the third.
A triple conjunction is an astronomical event where two planets or a planet and a star meet each other three times in a short period, either in opposition or at the time of inferior conjunction, if an inferior planet is involved. The visible movement of the planet or the planets in the sky is therefore normally prograde at the first conjunction, retrograde at the second conjunction and again prograde at the third conjunction.
Eando Binder is a pen name used by two mid-20th-century science fiction authors, Earl Andrew Binder (1904–1965) and his brother Otto Binder (1911–1974). The name is derived from their first initials (E and O Binder).
The Outward Urge is a science fiction fix-up novel by British writer John Wyndham. It was originally published with four chapters in 1959. A fifth chapter, originally published in 1961 as a separate short story "The Emptiness of Space", was included in later versions.
Eric John Stark is a character created by the science fiction author Leigh Brackett. Stark is the hero of a series of pulp adventures set in a time when the Solar System has been colonized. His origin-story shares some characteristics with feral characters such as Mowgli and Tarzan; his adventures take place in the shared space opera planets of 1940s and 1950s science fiction.
The Grand Tour is a series of novels written by American science fiction author Ben Bova.
The Outer Space Men – also known as the Colorform Aliens – is a group of seven "bendy" action figures produced by the Colorforms Company in 1968, they were designed by toy inventor Mel Birnkrant. The 3.5" to 7" bendable action figures incorporate a pliable metal wire armature encased in painted soft vinyl bodies with "accordion" joints, just like the aforementioned Major Matt Mason line, with whom The Outer Space Men were initially designed to be utilized. Each fictional character represents an extraterrestrial being from the planets in our Solar System, as well as various places in our galaxy.
A fix-up is a novel created from several short fiction stories that may or may not have been initially related or previously published. The stories may be edited for consistency, and sometimes new connecting material, such as a frame story or other interstitial narration, is written for the new work. The term was coined by the science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt, who published several fix-ups of his own, including The Voyage of the Space Beagle, but the practice exists outside of science fiction: The use of the term in science fiction criticism was popularised by the first (1979) edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by Peter Nicholls, which credited van Vogt with the creation of the term. The name “fix-up” comes from the changes that the author needs to make in the original texts, to make them fit together as though they were a novel. Foreshadowing of events from the later stories may be jammed into an early chapter of the fix-up, and character development may be interleaved throughout the book. Contradictions and inconsistencies between episodes are usually worked out.
The Planetary series of stories by Stanley G. Weinbaum is a series of short stories, published in Wonder Stories and Astounding Stories in the 1930s, which are set upon various planets and moons of the Solar System.
The following is a list of works by Arthur C. Clarke.
Planets in astrology have a meaning different from the astronomical understanding of what a planet is. Before the age of telescopes, the night sky was thought to consist of two very similar components: fixed stars, which remained motionless in relation to each other, and "wandering stars", which moved relative to the fixed stars over the course of the year.
