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The Planetary Society Weblog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Feb. 14, 2008 | 14:56 PST | 22:56 UTC
Nonfunctioning descending U.S. spy satellite to be blown up
Various news outlets are reporting today that the United States plans to deal directly with a potentially harmful situation (here's the Reuters and Associated Press stories). A large spy satellite that was launched in 2006 but failed after reaching... More»
Feb. 13, 2008 | 16:20 PST | Feb. 14 00:20 UTC
Triple near-Earth asteroid discovered
Astronomers using the soon-to-be-closed(?) Arecibo observatory announced today the discovery of the first near-Earth object known to be a triple system. Asteroid 153591 (2001 SN263) was first discovered as a mote of light by the LINEAR project on... More»
Feb. 13, 2008 | 12:10 PST | 20:10 UTC
White Rock through the ages: Viking (1976-1980)
This is the second installment in my look at one enigmatic feature on Mars as seen by all its orbiters through the more than thirty years of spacecraft observations. The feature called "White Rock" was first spotted in Mariner 9 images in 1972, a... More»
Feb. 12, 2008 | 15:11 PST | 23:11 UTC
Opportunity watches the clouds drift by
Opportunity is now following a rather leisurely autumn schedule, according to the latest update on the mission website. The rover wakes up briefly in its morning to perform a direct-to-Earth communications session, often snapping some images... More»
Feb. 11, 2008 | 13:23 PST | 21:23 UTC
Two Things to Watch Tomorrow
I don't know how accessible these are to the non-U.S. readers, but tomorrow night will see premieres of two very interesting-looking space-themed shows. First up, on the public television show NOVA, is "Astrospies," about covert military space... More»
Feb. 8, 2008 | 13:31 PST | 21:31 UTC
White Rock through the ages: Mariner 9, 1972
While conversing with Ken Edgett about the smiley face on Mars he remarked to me how different Mars looks at different pixel scales, and in particular that there is a transition somewhere in the neighborhood of six to seven meters per pixel. At... More»
Feb. 7, 2008 | 13:36 PST | 21:36 UTC
Atlantis and Columbus embark for the International Space Station
Despite some worries about the weather, the Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off this afternoon, bound for the International Space Station with the Columbus scientific module aboard. So many of the recent Shuttle missions have sent up this truss or... More»
Feb. 7, 2008 | 12:34 PST | 20:34 UTC
Name a telescope in 25 words or less
NASA announced today the opportunity to suggest a name for the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope. The spacecraft presently known as GLAST is scheduled for launch in "mid-2008," according to the release, and will study the universe in the... More»
Feb. 6, 2008 | 14:10 PST | 22:10 UTC
Finding images from Mars
There have been so many missions to Mars, which have sent back so much data, that figuring out how to find images of places on Mars can be really overwhelming. Today while in search of some Mars photos I stumbled across a website that has probably... More»
Feb. 5, 2008 | 12:25 PST | 20:25 UTC
NASA's 2009 budget
The President sent Congress his proposed 2009 budget yesterday, and it generally looks like excellent news for space science, though the Society does have some concerns about delays to the Mars program. You can read The Planetary Society's take on... More»
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