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 itself. Most of the mass collected in the centre, forming the Sun; the rest of the mass flattened into a protoplanetary disc, out of which the planets and other bodies in the Solar System formed. There are, however, arguments against this hypothesis. French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes was the first to propose a model for the origin of the Solar System in his "Le Monde" (ou Traité de lumière) which he wrote in 1632 and 1633 and for which he delayed publication because of the Inquisition and it was published only after his death in 1664. In his view,