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
History of Solar System formation and evolution hypotheses Earth, the amount of water trapped in its mineral structure would also be roughly similar). Conversely, the fission model, while it can account for the similarity in chemical composition and the lack of iron in the Moon, cannot adequately explain its high orbital inclination and, in particular, the large amount of angular momentum in the Earth–Moon system, more than any other planet–satellite pair in the Solar System. For many years after "Apollo", the binary accretion model was settled on as the best hypothesis for explaining the Moon's origins, even though it was known to be flawed. Then, at a conference