I miss the Olympics.

For two weeks, the world had the peculiar pleasure of watching anatomically improbable athletes perform physically implausible tasks. And while the Olympians soared, sprinted and swam, stretching their bodies to their very limits, I basked in their glory from the comfort of my couch, snug in my pajamas, eating mint chocolate-chip ice cream. What could be better?

Oh, Olympics. I miss your impish little gymnasts, your prodigious, grunting strongmen. I miss wondering how a single species could produce such diverse specimens. I miss Mary Carillo and her octopus kite, Bob Costas and his eager-puppy interviews. I think I even miss beach volleyball.

So, to bring back a little bit of the glory of the summer games, this column will take an Olympic tour of the solar system.

Let’s start at the track, where our solar system hosts sprints and distance races. Mercury, loping along in the solar system’s inner lane, runs a lap around the sun every three months or so, at an average velocity of almost 50 kilometers per second (take that, Usain Bolt). Neptune, meanwhile, having drawn the unlucky outer lane, settles for a more leisurely pace: about 5 kilometers per second, or 165 Earth years per lap.

There’s gymnastics, too. Every planet has perfected the pirouette, performing an endless string of turns while simultaneously looping around the sun in faultlessly drawn ovals. But some have added personal modifications to the compulsory rotate-and-revolve routine. Uranus, for one, has subbed out the standard upright twirl for a cartwheel. Though each planet spins on an axis that’s something short of perfect (Earth’s axis is tilted by about 23.5 degrees), Uranus’ axis is more than 90 degrees from plumb.

Much has been made of the bizzaro body types of the games’ female gymnasts this year, but it was heartening to see the whole gamut — from fluid, elegant Nastia Liukin to the peewee hardbody Shawn Johnson — competing at the very highest level. The planets, too, boast a diversity of shapes and sizes. There’s the solid little brick of Mercury, so different from giants like Jupiter which are all haze and clouds. And while the gymnastics world quibbles about whether the diminutive Chinese athletes truly qualify to compete, astronomers bicker over the authenticity of Pluto’s planetary passport.

In the solar system Olympics, planets and moons compete both solo and in pairs. Pluto and Charon may be the system’s best-known twosome, so close in size and distance that they circle one another in a synchronized maneuver that would impress even those fused-at-the-Speedo diving pairs. Pluto and Charon are tidally locked: Gravity has arranged for them to circle one another, with the same side of each always facing the other, perpetually.

Humans have created some solar system Olympic events of our own. There’s the slingshot, a precision maneuver in which you shoot a spacecraft into space and toward a planet, bringing the spacecraft whirling around — but not into — the planet, picking up a gravitational velocity kick that will take it to its next destination. (Bonus points are awarded for stringing multiple slingshots together. Cassini pulled off a total of four of these gravity-assists before reaching its destination, Saturn.)

While those Olympic gymnasts manage to twist, twirl and land one-legged on a 4-inch balance beam, scientists have engineered equally improbable landings out in the solar system. The reigning champion in this sport is NEAR Shoemaker, which traveled almost 200 million miles to land on a tumbling, 22-mile long asteroid — and managed to touch down with a gentle thump, not a crash.

The Mars Phoenix probe, which dropped anchor near Mars’ north pole in May, also nailed a difficult landing, coordinating its thrusters and parachute, jettisoning its protective heat shield and laying down its landing legs. From there, it went on to master an even tougher move: It “touched” that Martian holy grail, water ice.

But that’s a story for 2010.

Kate Becker is an astronomy outreach program manager. Contact her at www.spacecrafty.com.