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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Jan. 31, 2012 | 16:32 PST | Feb. 1 00:32 UTC
Official Phobos-Grunt Failure Report Released
By Louis D. Friedman
Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, has released its official report concerning the failure of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which fell back to Earth from orbit on January 15 after failing to ignite the engines that were to... More»
Jan. 31, 2012 | 12:12 PST | 20:12 UTC
What's up in the solar system in February 2012
I think the word for the month of February is: "routine." The 21 missions that I'm tracking (amounting to 24 spacecraft) are nearly all in routine science operations or cruise behavior, gathering data from across the solar system or journeying to... More»
Jan. 31, 2012 | 09:37 PST | 17:37 UTC
Akatsuki to try for Venus orbit in June 2016
Date has been corrected to June 2016 (original article had December 2016). And it's no longer clear that there's been a formal decision to enter orbit on that date rather than in 2015 or later. See the notes below. --ESL
Japan's Venus climate... More»
Jan. 30, 2012 | 12:23 PST | 20:23 UTC
Dawn Journal: How does Dawn know where "down" is?
Here's the latest checkup with the Dawn mission, contributed by Marc Rayman, the mission's Project System Engineer. Thanks Marc! --ESLClick to enlarge >Marc RaymanBy Marc Rayman
Dear Asdawnished Readers,
Dawn is scrutinizing Vesta from its... More»
Jan. 29, 2012 | 18:08 PST | Jan. 30 02:08 UTC
A shooting star is not a star at all
My kids are watching this right now and I love it every time I hear it so I thought I'd share. They Might Be Giants present "What Is a Shooting Star?"
... More»
Jan. 27, 2012 | 14:29 PST | 22:29 UTC
One Man's Quest for SETI's Most Promising Signal
Review of Robert H. Gray, The Elusive Wow: Searching for Extraterrestrial intelligence (Chicago: Palmer Square Press, 2011).
By Amir Alexander
The signal from the stars arrived at the Big Ear radio observatory in Ohio at 11:16 p.m. on the night... More»
Jan. 26, 2012 | 21:43 PST | Jan. 27 05:43 UTC
Guest Post: Jason Davis: Solar flares from Skylab
Early on January 23, 2012, our Sun tossed out a powerful, M-class solar flare. M-class eruptions aren't as violent as their X-class siblings, but the accompanying ejection of excited protons was powerful enough to light up our planet's polar regions... More»
Jan. 26, 2012 | 20:06 PST | Jan. 27 04:06 UTC
Today's 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast Offers a Free, Online Astronomy Class!
By Mat Kaplan
The marvelous 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast has begun its fourth year of daily offerings from contributors around the world. The Planetary Society will originate at least 12 podcasts in 2012, each on the last Thursday of the month... More»
Jan. 26, 2012 | 14:55 PST | 22:55 UTC
Parallel planetary processes create semantic headaches
So here's a semantic problem I ran into today. Consider this photo, a radar image of the Congo river from Envisat.Click to enlarge >Synthetic aperture radar view of the Congo riverThis wide-swath radar image is a mosaic of two images centred over... More»
Jan. 25, 2012 | 16:33 PST | Jan. 26 00:33 UTC
Stephen Hawking's Curios – UPDATE
by Charlene Anderson
The Cosmos Award for Public Presentation of Science – at least the blown-glass Saturn trophy given to Stephen Hawking by The Planetary Society – continues to appear around the Internet. The BBC has now posted a great image from... More»
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