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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Mar. 4, 2009 | 09:57 PST | 17:57 UTC
Update to my S/2008 S1 post: Cassini can fly past it!
UPDATE: This new moon is now named Aegaeon.
So it turns out I was totally wrong yesterday when I claimed that Cassini wouldn't be allowed to get close enough to the G ring to get a decent image of the newly discovered tiny moonlet S/2008 S1. And... More»
Mar. 4, 2009 | 09:38 PST | 17:38 UTC
Rebooting Odyssey
I just received one of those chillingly-titled missives from JPL: "Mars Odyssey Mission Status Report." The words "Status Report" in a JPL email title almost always mean that something has gone wrong with a spacecraft, but this time it's not as bad... More»
Mar. 3, 2009 | 10:59 PST | 18:59 UTC
A new moon for Saturn within the G ring
UPDATE: This new moon is now named Aegaeon.
EDIT: Check out a correction posted on March 4: Cassini definitely could and may well get images of this newly discovered moon.
It's been a while since the last discovery of a moon at Saturn by Cassini;... More»
Mar. 2, 2009 | 16:38 PST | Mar. 3 00:38 UTC
Methane is a greenhouse gas on Pluto, too
There's a new scientific paper in press that states that Pluto has much more methane in its lower atmosphere than previously thought. Pluto's atmosphere is very thin (somewhere in the range of 0.0006 to 0.0024 percent of Earth's atmospheric... More»
Mar. 1, 2009 | 12:26 PST | 20:26 UTC
The Chang'e 1 mission is over
According to this item from the Xinhua news agency, the first Chinese lunar orbiter, Chang'e 1, was intentionally de-orbited and crashed into the Moon today, at 08:13 UTC March 1, 2009. They gave its impact location as 1.5 degrees south, 52.36... More»
Feb. 26, 2009 | 14:23 PST | 22:23 UTC
Mapping Mars, now and in history
Planetary cartographer Phil Stooke has been working on a cool project to compose and compare maps of Mars that show how we saw the planet throughout the Space Age. He's been posting a lot of this work on unmannedspaceflight.com but I wanted to... More»
Feb. 25, 2009 | 09:31 PST | 17:31 UTC
Summary of Cassini's flybys of Saturn's moons
I'm sick today and not up to writing much; fortunately the following graphic arrived just in time in my mailbox this morning. It neatly summarizes all the completed, planned, and proposed close flybys of Saturn's moons by Cassini throughout its... More»
Feb. 24, 2009 | 12:58 PST | 20:58 UTC
John Spencer: Cassini's proposed extended-extended mission tour
I asked John Spencer to write something on the proposed plans for Cassini's second mission extension. The mission has just selected an orbital tour for the extension -- the plan for where Cassini will travel, when -- and is now seeking approval... More»
Feb. 24, 2009 | 12:39 PST | 20:39 UTC
Quick Dawn update: Gravity assist indeed went well
There's been no press release on how Dawn's recent flyby of Mars went, so finally I inquired at JPL for an update. Marc Rayman provided the following: "The gravity assist went perfectly. We will have the final navigation reconstruction near the end... More»
Feb. 24, 2009 | 10:44 PST | 18:44 UTC
UStream Live from JPL's clean room RIGHT NOW
JPL is broadcasting live (only for another half hour or so I think) from the "High Bay" where the Mars Science Laboratory is being assembled; Veronica McGregor (erstwhile the Twitter voice of Phoenix) is online answering questions. Apparently... More»
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