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Researchers have shared a radical new idea for how to put a spacecraft in orbit around Neptune: Use the thin atmosphere of Triton, Neptune's largest moon, to capture it. The only spacecraft to ...
Triton, which is about 1,680 miles (2,700 kilometers) wide, has a unique property among large solar system moons: a retrograde orbit. [Video: Fly By Neptune's Freezing Moon Triton] Planets form ...
Neptune's original family of satellites may have been destroyed when its largest moon, Triton, entered the picture. New research suggests that the massive moon may have tossed some of the original ...
The next moon beyond that, Themisto ... The only explanation for its properties, especially its bizarre and unique orbit, is that Triton is a captured Kuiper belt object. We often talk about ...
For starters, Triton’s orbit is all wrong. Every other large moon that we know of — Earth’s Moon, as well as all of the major, massive moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus — all orbit in ...
For years, scientists have suspected that Triton wasn't part of Neptune's original collection of moons. The massive moon has a backward orbit, and makes up over 99 percent of all the mass orbiting ...
Triton orbits Neptune in the opposite direction ... suggesting it was yoinked out of the Kuiper Belt and into a wonky Neptune orbit. The Moon, Williams and Zugger say, has an orbit around Earth ...
Triton likely originated in the Kuiper Belt, beyond the orbit of Neptune, and was sent hurtling inwards until it was captured by Neptune's gravity. Directly after capture, the moon would have been ...
Sustaining the ocean The exact point in time when Triton was captured by Neptune and the length of time it took for the moon's orbit to become circularized are unknown. Triton’s orbit is ...
The exact point in time when Triton was captured by Neptune and the length of time it took for the moon's orbit to become circularized are unknown. Triton’s orbit is currently almost exactly ...