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The Planetary Society Blog

Archive

Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.


  • Nov. 13, 2009 | 13:55 PST | 21:55 UTC
    LCROSS team: "Yes, we found water!"
    I just posted (actually, another TPS staffer just posted for me, for which I'm thankful) a story on the announcement today that LCROSS definitely found lots of water in the spectra from their October 9 impact. I still don't have my Internet access... More»
  • Nov. 13, 2009 | 11:29 PST | 19:29 UTC
    STS 129 Astronauts arrive at Cape Canaveral
    Planetary Society volunteer Ken Kremer is reporting for us from the Kennedy Space Center, where he will watch the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis set for Monday, November 16. Kremer is a research scientist and freelance journalist who spends his... More»
  • Nov. 12, 2009 | 17:37 PST | Nov. 13 01:37 UTC
    LightSail Featured on NPR's Science Friday
    by Susan Lendroth Mirror-bright and shaped like a kite, LightSail will orbit Earth on the pressure of sunlight alone. Our Executive Director Lou Friedman joins host Ira Flatow on NPR's Science Friday -- November 13 -- for a live chat about The... More»
  • Nov. 12, 2009 | 14:45 PST | 22:45 UTC
    Two new names in the solar system: Herse and Weywot
    Via the USGS I learned that Jupiter has passed a milestone of sorts, and now has fifty named satellites. The fiftieth is Herse, a 2000-meter-diameter rock orbiting 22 million kilometers from Jupiter that was formerly known as S/2003 J17. There... More»
  • Nov. 12, 2009 | 12:26 PST | 20:26 UTC
    First space imaging class tomorrow, 10:30 a.m. Pacific / 18:30 UT
    NOTE: Due to problems with my Internet service, I had to postpone the class, and don't know yet when I'll be able to reschedule it. Sorry!If you have sent me an email asking to register for the first of my classes in amateur image processing... More»
  • Nov. 12, 2009 | 11:49 PST | 19:49 UTC
    Highlights from today's Spirit press briefing
    Since A. J. S. Rayl was also listening in on today's press briefing about the efforts to extricate Spirit from her predicament at Troy, I'll just hit the high points and send you over to her story when she has posted it. But first, an amused... More»
  • Nov. 12, 2009 | 10:04 PST | 18:04 UTC
    Crescent Earth
    Just hours away from its Earth flyby, Rosetta is busily snapping images and gathering other science data. Among other things, it's using its spectrometric instruments to try to follow up on the Moon water discovery made by Chandrayaan-1, Cassini,... More»
  • Nov. 11, 2009 | 09:19 PST | 17:19 UTC
    Hayabusa stumbles on the path back to Earth
    JAXA issued a press release (in Japanese) on November 9 stating that one of Hayabusa's ion thrusters, thruster D, had stopped operating. Hayabusa launched with four ion thrusters, but D was one of only two that are still functioning. So the... More»
  • Nov. 11, 2009 | 09:09 PST | 17:09 UTC
    Tracking the stars -- and Earth
    This was a neat photo from ESA today. Pretty much every single spacecraft carries one or more "star trackers," cameras or sensors designed to provide information on the spacecraft's position and orientation based upon the observed positions of... More»
  • Nov. 10, 2009 | 12:21 PST | 20:21 UTC
    Four moons and a ring
    Thanks to Mike Malaska for the tip on this one. The image is part of an animation that ends with Rhea transiting Saturn. In the middle of the sequence, Cassini's narrow-angle camera captures four of Saturn's moons in the same shot -- a rare... More»