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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Oct. 19, 2011 | 12:10 PDT | 19:10 UTC
NOVA: Finding Life Beyond Earth airs tonight, with lots of planetary stars
Programming note: tonight, public television stations will be airing a new, two-hour NOVA documentary, "Finding Life Beyond Earth." If you do not get American public television, I've been told that NOVA will stream the show from their website after... More»
Oct. 19, 2011 | 11:49 PDT | 18:49 UTC
A new trick for IKAROS: spinning the other way
JAXA's solar sail demonstration craft IKAROS is still puttering along, 17 months after it launched, and its controllers back on Earth keep coming up with new things to try with it. I'm pretty amazed by the most recent trick: reversing its spin... More»
Oct. 18, 2011 | 17:55 PDT | Oct. 19 00:55 UTC
Book Reviews: Two books that deliver knowledge in little chunks
I consider October and November to be book review season. We're well out of the mental coasting of summer and have gotten into the groove of school and work in fall, and are in the relative quiet before the insanity of the season that stretches... More»
Oct. 18, 2011 | 16:36 PDT | 23:36 UTC
The National Science Foundation's Science360 Radio
by Mat Kaplan
Producer, Planetary Radio
Hey, junkie! You just can't get enough science, can you? The National Science Foundation has your fix. It's free, it's 24 x 7, and it's as close as your smartphone, tablet or computer.
The Planetary Society... More»
Oct. 18, 2011 | 12:01 PDT | 19:01 UTC
Phobos-Grunt unpacked! With Yinghuo-1 and LIFE!
I know I just posted about Phobos-Grunt on Friday, but there are lots of new pictures from Baikonur Cosmodrome (Russia's main launch facility in Kazakhstan) showing Phobos-Grunt being removed from its shipping crate and tipped upright in preparation... More»
Oct. 17, 2011 | 05:44 PDT | 12:44 UTC
Heads up! ROSAT is coming down this week
Click to enlarge >ROSAT It should give you a feeling of déjà vu: a defunct satellite's orbit is decaying, and because that orbit is circular it's going to be impossible to predict where and when along its ground track it's going to... More»
Oct. 14, 2011 | 15:39 PDT | 22:39 UTC
Phobos-Grunt update; lots of new images and video!
Фобос-Грунт is getting ready for launch!
Russia's Phobos sample return mission and the Chinese Mars orbiter that will ride piggyback on it to Mars will soon be shipped to Baikonur... More»
Oct. 14, 2011 | 13:21 PDT | 20:21 UTC
While the U.S. Stalls, Europe Moves On to Mars
By Charlene Anderson
The European Space Agency (ESA) seems to have gotten tired of waiting for NASA to commit to its share of the joint 2016/2018 Mars missions that were planned to lay the groundwork for an eventual delivery of samples of Mars to... More»
Oct. 14, 2011 | 10:04 PDT | 17:04 UTC
Guest post: Jason Davis: Earth observing satellites record large Arctic ozone loss
by Jason Davis
The Arctic isn't supposed to be the pole of the Earth with an ozone problem.
Yet this year, for the first time, seasonal ozone loss above the Earth's northern pole rivaled that of Antarctica. A NASA-led study published in the... More»
Oct. 13, 2011 | 15:38 PDT | 22:38 UTC
Mars Missions Supported, Planetary Voices Heard
By Charlene Anderson
It looks like we rattled a few cages in Washington, D.C. this week.
White House staffers in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) returned from their holiday weekend to find more than 1500 messages from... More»
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