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
Water on terrestrial planets of the Solar System primordial ×1.6 SMOW ratio suggests that ~ of has been lost to space via solar wind stripping. The cometary and asteroidal delivery of water to accreting Earth and Mars has significant caveats, even though it is favored by D/H isotopic ratios. Key issues include: An alternative to the cometary and asteroidal delivery of HO would be the accretion via physisorption during the formation of the terrestrial planets in the solar nebula. This would be consistent with the thermodynamic estimate of around two Earth masses of water vapor within 3AU of the solar accretionary disk, which would exceed by a factor