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* Mercury has been visited by only one spacecraft, Mariner 10, which conducted three flybys of the planet in the early 1970s.

* Uranus is larger in diameter than Neptune, but smaller in mass.

* The most heavily-cratered object in the solar system is Jupiter's moon Callisto.

* French astronomer Charles Messier (1730-1813) discovered 13 comets and compiled a listing of celestial objects, the Messier Catalog.

* Pluto is the only planet in our solar system that has not been observed close-up by a spacecraft.

* Arthur C. Clarke, author and space visionary, was born in England on December 16, 1917.

* Asteroid 951 Gaspra was discovered by Ukrainian astronomer Grigoriy Neujmin, who named it after a resort in the Crimea.

* Father Angelo Secchi (1818-1878), official astronomer to Pope Pius IX, conducted the first analysis of starlight with a spectroscope.

* The moon is drifting away from Earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches (3.82 centimeters) per year.

* The stars of Orion, seen in the West as a hunter, have been depicted in Japan as the sleeves of a kimono.

* Persian astronomer Al-Sufi referred to the Andromeda galaxy as "little cloud" in a star chart drawn in the 10th century.

* The 24-hour day is believed to have originated from ancient Egyptian observations of stars that rose and fell in regular intervals.

* The Sojourner rover operated on Mars for 83 sols (martian days) before communications were lost at the end of September 1997.

* The first soft-landing on Mars was achieved by the Soviet Mars-3 probe. It landed on the martian surface on December 3, 1971.

* In the late 1960s and early '70s, Pan Am World Airways accepted reservations for commercial flights to the moon scheduled to begin in 2000. Among the thousands who signed up was then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.

* In the fall of 1945, Arthur C. Clarke wrote an article in Wireless World envisioning communications satellites that would be operated by crews on board.

* The asteroid Mathilde has craters named after coal fields, basins and mines on Earth. Among the craters' names are Similkameen, Aachen, Damodar, Ishikari, and Enugu.

* Pluto has by far the longest year of any planet in our solar system, taking 248 Earth years to orbit the sun.

* A crater on Venus, Mumtaz-Mahal, is named after the Mogul empress for whom the Taj Mahal was built.

* Underwriters at the British insurance market Lloyd's of London have insured individuals against death or injury caused by a piece of disintegrating satellite falling from the sky.

* Italian-French astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini (1625-1712) discovered four of Saturn's moons (Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys, and Dione), as well as a gap in the planet's rings. The Cassini spacecraft, now en route to Saturn, is named after him.

* The space shuttle Columbia was named after a sloop captained by Robert Gray. In May 1792, Gray maneuvered the ship through perilous inland waters to explore the Pacific Northwest.

* The two Voyager spacecraft, now heading toward interstellar space, carry records containing various musical selections, including Chuck Berry's song "Johnny B. Goode."

* On November 17, 1970, a Soviet rover called Lunokhod 1 analyzed soil samples on the moon.

* In late 1989, several months before its launch, the Hubble Space Telescope was flown to Kennedy Space Center in a classified container called "the casket" that was normally used to transport spy satellites. (Source: "The Hubble Wars," by Eric J. Chaisson)

* The space shuttle Endeavour was named for a ship captained by British explorer James Cook in the late 18th Century. Cook's crew ate a diet rich in vitamin C, and thus didn't suffer the disease scurvy, previously common in long sea voyages.

* In ancient Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the moon. She also was associated with wild animals and the hunt.

* Among the names given to rocks in the vicinity of the Sojourner rover on Mars were: Gumby, Contour, Lamb, Asterix, Ratbert, Kitten, Duck, Iguana, Anthill, Nibbles, and Ender.

* The first U.S. space shuttle was given the name 'Enterprise' in response to a write-in campaign by 'Star Trek' fans. The shuttle was originally going to be named 'Constitution.'

* The space shuttle Atlantis was named after a research vessel used by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute from 1930 to 1966

* The martian moons Phobos and Deimos derive their names, respectively, from the Greek words for "fear" and "terror."

* During a spacewalk, an astronaut's spacesuit is pressurized to 4.3 pounds per square inch, less than a third of the air pressure experienced at sea level on Earth.

* The 'Chunqui,' an ancient Chinese compendium of astronomical records, contains the earliest known mention of a solar eclipse (709 B.C.).

* In the cable TV series 'Stargate SG-1,' a team of explorers encounters various peoples -- Vikings, Greeks, Arabs -- who were abducted from Earth and scattered around the galaxy. The series is fictitious.

* Jahangir, the fourth Mughal ruler of India, ordered that knives and swords be forged from an iron meteorite that landed in his realm in 1621.

* Mars and Mercury each have surface gravity approximately 0.38 that of the Earth.

* Mars enthusiast Robert Zubrin reports that he received over 4,000 letters and e-mails following the publication of his 1996 book 'The Case for Mars,' and that most were supportive.

* According to a classification scheme devised by Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, Type I civilizations control a planet; Type II civilizations have colonized a solar system; and Type III have spread throughout a galaxy.

* In the 1983 'Star Wars' film 'Return of the Jedi,' the heroes encounter Jabba the Hut, a tyrannical, roundish monster. Jabba also appears in the digitally enhanced version of 'Star Wars.'

* When pulsars were discovered in the late 1960s, astronomers labeled them "LGM" -- for "Little Green Men" -- but did not seriously mean to imply that the fast-spinning stars are alien beacons.

* Physicist Freeman Dyson suggested in the early 1960s that an advanced civilization would build a vast shell around its star. Such a shell, now called a "Dyson sphere," would absorb the star's energy for the civilization's use.

* Both the moon and Mars contain substances that have been proposed as fuels for future nuclear fusion reactors. On Mars, the relevant substance is deuterium, while on the moon it is helium-3.

* The surface area of Mars is approximately equivalent to the area of all the continents of Earth.

* The National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), whose responsibilities include analysis of spy satellite images, was established in October 1996 through the consolidation of several units from the Pentagon, the CIA and other agencies.

* The 19th Century British imperialist Cecil Rhodes, dissatisfied with his conquests in Africa, wrote: "I would annex the planets if I could. I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far."

* In the 1964 movie 'The Earth Dies Screaming,' Britain is invaded by alien-controlled robots, and survivors are besieged by walking corpses. The film has been called "an inferior forerunner" to 'Night of the Living Dead.'

* The Voyager probes, now heading toward interstellar space, carry recorded greetings in 55 languages. The English greeting says 'Hello from the children of planet Earth.'

* Total eclipses of the sun are rare from any one location on Earth, occurring only about once every 400 years.

* The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which operates U.S. spy satellites, was founded in 1960, shortly after Russia's downing of a U2 spy plane demonstrated the desirability of satellite reconnaissance. NRO's existence was declassified in 1992.

* The first photograph of the moon was taken by chemistry professor John William Draper in 1840.

* The highest known mountain in the solar system is the martian volcano Olympus Mons, which rises more than three times higher than Mount Everest.

* A martian year lasts 687 Earth days. A martian day lasts 24 hours and 37 minutes.

* Pluto's moon Charon is named after the ferryman who transports souls to the underworld in Greek mythology.

* The 1990s TV series 'Babylon 5' was about a massive 23rd-century space station of that name. Disconcertingly, the station's predecessor, Babylon 4, had disappeared without a trace.

* German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), formulator of the Three Laws of Planetary Motion, spent years defending his mother Katherine against charges of witchcraft.

* Most moons of Uranus are named after characters in the writings of William Shakespeare. Two exceptions -- Belinda and Umbriel -- are named after characters in Alexander Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock.'

* Jupiter's moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system, having a diameter of 3270 miles. It is larger than Mercury and Pluto, and three-quarters the size of Mars.

* A slight wobble of the Earth in space, caused by the varying gravitational pulls of the sun and moon, is called a "nutation."

* Aristarchus of Samos, who flourished in the early 3rd century B.C., was the first to argue that the Earth moves around the sun. His contemporaries ridiculed this belief.

* Danish astronomer Tyco Brahe (1546-1601) lost part of his nose in a duel over who was the better mathematician. He replaced the lost part with a piece made of gold and silver.

* Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort theorized in 1950 that there's a vast cloud of cometary material surrounding the solar system. The Oort Cloud's existence is now widely accepted.

* The six small moons of Neptune discovered by the Voyager 2 spacecraft have been named after water nymphs and lovers and relatives of the sea god Poseidon (whose Roman name was Neptune). The moons are: Naiad, Galatea, Thalassa, Larissa, Proteus, and Despina.

* In the 1420s, the Mongol prince and astronomer Ulugh Beg, grandson of the conqueror Timur, constructed a large observatory in Samarkand.

* India's first satellite launch was in July 1980. The satellite, called Rohini 1, was placed into orbit by India's SLV-3 launcher.

* The Saturn 5 rocket's first use was to launch the unpiloted Apollo 4 mission on November 9, 1967. The mission sent hardware into orbit and back through the atmosphere, as a trial run for getting to and from the moon.

* Around 1500, Wan Hu, an official of China's Ming Dynasty, reportedly tried to launch himself in a chair attached to 47 powder-fueled rockets. He's believed to have died in the explosion.

* The first commercial communications satellite was called Early Bird. It was launched in 1965.

* Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovskii, the Russian rocket visionary, published a novel in 1913 called 'In the Year 2000 (On the Rocket).'

* The astronauts aboard the first flight of the space shuttle (April 1981) were John W. Young and Robert L. Crippen.

* In the 1960s, NASA began developing a nuclear-powered rocket called NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications). The project was canceled by budget cuts in 1972.

* In a 1961 article, the young astronomer Carl Sagan proposed that humans transform Venus to make it habitable.

* In a 1738 poem, Voltaire wrote that comets "are feared as much as thunder."

* In 1915, Congress created an organization that came to be known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). NACA was the institutional predecessor of NASA.

* The solar system's largest asteroid, Ceres, comprises over one-third of the estimated total mass of all asteroids.

* When charged particles from the solar wind become trapped in Earth's magnetic field, they collide with air molecules above Earth's magnetic poles. The air molecules start to glow, forming auroras, also known as northern and southern lights.

* Venus and Mercury are the only planets in the solar system that have no known moons.

* Zsa Zsa Gabor played a native of Venus in the 1958 film 'Queen of Outer Space.'

* The Soviet Union's Venera 3 probe was the first spacecraft to reach another planet. It landed on Venus on March 1, 1966, but failed to return data.

* The 'Space 1999' television series of the late 1970s featured characters who travel through the galaxy aboard Earth's runaway moon.

* The first spacecraft to take photos of the moon's south pole was NASA's Lunar Orbiter 4. It was launched on May 4, 1967.

* The first spacecraft to obtain close-up views of Mercury was Mariner 10. It passed within 500 miles of our solar system's innermost planet on March 29, 1974.

* The Viking 1 mission to Mars was the first U.S. attempt to "soft-land" a spacecraft on another planet. The spacecraft landed safely on the red planet's Plain of Chryse on July 20, 1976.

* Pluto has one known moon, Charon, discovered in 1978. Charon's orbit is gravitationally locked with Pluto, so both bodies always keep the same hemisphere facing each other.

* The sun dwarfs the other bodies in the solar system, representing approximately 99.86 percent of the solar system's total mass. The sun's interior could hold 700,000 Earth-sized planets.

* The first space station in science fiction was in Edward Everett Hale's 1869 story "The Brick Moon." The "moon" of the title was a set of brick spheres and arches, launched into space by gigantic flywheels.

* Halley's Comet is the most famous example of a relatively short-period comet, returning on an average of once every 76 years and traveling from beyond Neptune to within Venus' orbit. Confirmed sightings go back to 240 B.C.

* If you were born after September 1989, this is the first weekend in your lifetime that there are no humans in space. (August 27, 1999)

* The first spacecraft to land on the moon was the Soviet Luna 2 probe. Also known as Lunik 2, it was launched on September 12, 1959. After 33 hours of flight, radio signals stopped, indicating that the probe had hit the lunar surface.

* The Mercury space capsules of the early 1960s carried one astronaut each. Their successors, the Gemini capsules, carried two astronauts -- and thus were named after the mythological Gemini twins.

* Neptune's largest moon, Triton, was discovered in October, 1846 by William Lassell, a Liverpool brewer who had made a fortune supplying beer to British sailors. Lassell was an amateur astronomer renowned for building impressive telescopes. He found the satellite around Neptune just weeks after the discovery of the planet itself.

* Seven moons in the Solar System are larger than the planet Pluto, which has a diameter of just 1,438 miles. Four Jovian satellites -- Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa outdo Pluto for size. So does Saturn's largest moon Titan, Triton, which circles Neptune, and Earth's Moon.

* Before 1977, Saturn was the only planet in the solar system known to have rings. In March of that year, astronomers detected rings around Uranus while observing the planet as it passed in front of a star. Two years later, the Voyager spacecraft returned images of rings around Jupiter, showing that rings around giant planets are a common phenomenon.

* Jupiter has an intricate ring system, but its rings are much smaller and fainter than the brilliant disks orbiting Saturn. The rings were not discovered until the Voyager probes passed Jupiter in 1979. Scientists believe the swirling dusty rings were formed by material kicked up over eons by interplanetary meteoroids smashing into Jupiter's four small inner moons.

* Prior to 1960, the weather forecast on the evening news was pretty flat--no fancy satellite images of hurricanes and advancing storm fronts. Then, in April 1960, the first substantial weather-observing satellite was launched. Named TIROS, an acronym for Television and Infrared Observational Satellite, the orbiter photographed cloud cover and developing storms, the staple images of TV weather news.

* Aug. 17, 1969 -- Speaking on "Face the Nation," Neil Armstrong said: "I am quite certain that goals of the Mars variety are within our range, should we choose... that investment of our national resources." Armstrong thought it was "well within our capability" to prepare a program "to send astronauts to Mars - in 1981." Astronaut Mike Collins added: "I don't think 1981 is too soon".

* The Cassini spacecraft will pass within 725 miles of the Earth on Tuesday. It was launched in 1997 on a round-about trip that will take it past Jupiter next year, and finally to Saturn in 2004.

* Mars is smaller than Earth, but it rotates more slowly, making a Martian day only 41 minutes longer than an Earth day. The Martian year is 687 Earth days, making each season twice as long as Earth's.

* Between 1960 and 1988, the Soviet Union built 17 spacecraft to send to Mars. Only four reached their destination to return useful information. Failed launches condemned five of the missions. The rest of the probes missed their target or were lost when communications links or software failed. Even one of the successful missions, which put a craft into Mars orbit, was marred by disaster when an acompanying lander crashed into the surface.

* Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active object in the solar system. Volcanos on Io eject material at speeds up to 2,000 m.p.h., more than 20 times the speed of material erupting from volcanoes on Earth.

* The existence of Neptune was predicted as early as 1821 by astronomers who detected peculiar movement in the orbit of Uranus. They guessed that the orbit was being perturbed by the gravitation of an even-more-distant unknown planet. Within 25 years, astronomers had calculated where the planet should be, and Neptune was found there in 1846.

* Helios, the ancient Greek god of the sun, was believed to rise every morning from the sea in the east and drive his luminous chariot across the daytime sky. His name is the origin of much solar vocabulary we use today, such as heliosphere (the magnetized shell of hot plasma around the sun) and heliopause (the outer limits of the solar system where the solar wind meets the interstellar gas).

* Our solar system is orbiting near the outside of the Milky Way galaxy. It takes about 220 million years for the Sun to complete one loop around the center of the galaxy.

* Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, is two and a half times more massive than the rest of the planets combined, and about 318 times more massive than Earth. Jupiter's 88,000-mile diameter is 11 times larger than Earth's.

* An angstrom, the unit of length astronomers commonly use to measure the wavelength of light, is equal to one ten-millionth of a millimeter. Light visible to the human eye has wavelengths between about 4,000 and 8,000 angstroms.

* The Voyager 2 Spacecraft, launched from Cape Canaveral in 1977 on a mission to fly by Jupiter and Saturn, became the first spacecraft to observe Neptune when it passed that planet in 1989. The spacecraft is now leaving the solar system, but continues to send back data. It is more than 5.3 billion miles from Earth, and has traveled a total distance of more than 7.5 billion miles since launch.

* The rings of Saturn were first observed by Galileo in 1610.

* The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.5 light years, or 25 trillion miles from Earth.

* Mars has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos. The potato-shaped satellites are each less than 20 miles long and are pocked with craters.

* During a day on Mercury, the planet's distance from the Sun varies between 35 million and 43 million miles. Viewed from Mercury the Sun would increase and then decrease in size, but the change would be difficult to observe, as a day on the planet lasts 156 Earth days.

* Clouds of poisonous sulfuric acid floating in Venus' carbon dioxide atmosphere reflect light so well that the planet is one of our night sky's most brilliant objects.

* The first U.S. spacecraft, Explorer I, was launched January 31, 1958 by a modified army Jupiter C rocket. It collected data leading to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts, and demonstrated that micrometorites would not necessarily thwart space travel.

* So you've got dust bunnies? They could be coming from space. More than 3,000 tons of dusty material from space falls to Earth every day.

* It takes 8 1/4 minutes for light to reach Earth from the Sun.

* In 160 A.D., a Greek named Lucian of Samosata wrote one of the first recorded tales of a lunar voyage. In the story, the hero's sailing ship is caught by a terrible whirlwind and sent on an eight-day journey to the Moon.

* The first liquid-propellant rocket was launched March 16, 1926 by space-travel visionary Robert Goddard. Fueled by a mixture of liquid oxygen and gasoline, Goddard's rocket fired 41 feet into the air above his Aunt Effie's cabbage plot in Auburn, Mass.

* The largest of the planets, Jupiter, has two and a half times more mass than all the other planets together.