Progress in the geosciences has often followed the same fundamental paradigm for about two centuries: Earth’s present is the key to understanding its past and its future. This concept is at the root of most of what is known about the Earth. Similarly, knowledge of Earth’s geological and atmospheric processes can be, and has been, applied when studying the history of other planetary bodies. More recently, however, observations from other planets have fed back into our understanding of Earth. In this Perspective, we argue that many scientific mysteries about the Earth can be solved only by looking beyond it, and describe instances where other bodies, such as Mars, Venus and the Moon, have or could augment our understanding of processes on Earth. Future space missions offer the opportunity to probe the rich diversity of planetary environments and compositions, and further explore how they might serve as analogues, experiments and archives.

大约两个世纪以来，地球科学的进步常常遵循相同的基本范式：地球的存在是理解其过去和未来的关键。这个概念是关于地球的大多数已知知识的根源。同样，在研究其他行星体的历史时，可以并且已经应用​​了地球的地质和大气过程知识。然而，最近，其他行星的观测又反馈到我们对地球的理解中。在本《观点》中，我们认为，仅通过超越地球就可以解决许多关于地球的科学奥秘，并描述了火星，金星和月球等其他物体已经或可能增进我们对地球过程的理解的实例。