Discovery and exploration of the Solar System Discovery and exploration of the Solar System Discovery and exploration of the Solar System is observation, visitation, and increase in knowledge and understanding of Earth's "cosmic neighborhood". This includes the Sun, Earth and the Moon, the major planets including Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, their satellites, as well as smaller bodies including comets, asteroids, and dust. For many thousands of years, astronomers maintained a geocentric world view and did not recognize the existence of a Solar System. Most believed Earth was stationary at the center of the Universe and categorically different from the divine or ethereal objects
Formation and evolution of the Solar System formation of the Solar System. This period of heavy bombardment lasted several hundred million years and is evident in the cratering still visible on geologically dead bodies of the inner Solar System such as the Moon and Mercury. The oldest known evidence for life on Earth dates to 3.8 billion years ago—almost immediately after the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment. Impacts are thought to be a regular (if currently infrequent) part of the evolution of the Solar System. That they continue to happen is evidenced by the collision of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994, the 2009 Jupiter