A new statistical study of planets found by a technique called gravitational microlensing suggests that Neptune-mass worlds are likely the most common type of planet to form in the icy outer realms of planetary systems.

On this day in 1977, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, the first Voyager spacecraft to launch, departed on a journey that would take it to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and beyond.

On course to collect specimens from asteroid Bennu after its launch last year, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will search this month for objects sharing an orbit with Earth, a bonus science opportunity to locate possible fragments of the primordial building blocks that formed our home planet.