|
|
The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Feb. 18, 2009 | 08:29 PST | 16:29 UTC
News flash: Jupiter flagship mission selected to launch first
NASA announced this morning the results of last week's meeting to determine which of two proposed flagship missions, one to study the Jupiter system including Europa and Ganymede, and the other to study Titan, should proceed forward. The result:... More»
Feb. 17, 2009 | 17:57 PST | Feb. 18 01:57 UTC
LRO has arrived in Florida; LCROSS has shipped
A pile of pictures at the Kennedy Space Center Media Gallery documents the safe arrival of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at Astrotech, the private company where it'll undergo its final assembly and testing. As of this moment there's 22 photos of LRO... More»
Feb. 16, 2009 | 11:32 PST | 19:32 UTC
Now THAT's meteorology
Meteorology is the study of anything that happens above our heads, so it's totally proper that the following simultaneously alarming and hilarious bulletin was issued by the Jackson, Kentucky office of the National Weather Service. (For those of... More»
Feb. 16, 2009 | 07:02 PST | 15:02 UTC
LOTS of analysis of the flagship mission options - Europa or Titan?
Any day now we're going to be hearing about NASA's selection of the target of the next flagship mission; a meeting on the decision was held on February 12, but no result has been announced yet. If you're curious about the competing options, you can... More»
Feb. 13, 2009 | 08:34 PST | 16:34 UTC
Dawn Journal: Mars encounter
Here's a special pre-Mars update on the Dawn mission, contributed by Marc Rayman, the mission's Project System Engineer. Thanks Marc! --ESL
by Dr. Marc D. Rayman
Dear Charles Dawnwins,
Dawn continues to close in on Mars, ready for the... More»
Feb. 13, 2009 | 07:34 PST | 15:34 UTC
Lunar missions: the start of an ending for one, the start of a beginning for another
JAXA reported today that "The relay satellite 'OKINA (RSTAR)' made an impact on the lunar surface on February 12, 2009 (JST), and the four-way Doppler measurement mission was successfully completed." Okina was just a tiny subsatellite deployed by... More»
Feb. 12, 2009 | 13:52 PST | 21:52 UTC
Jupiter may have a "super-Earth" at its center
This story has been lying in my inbox since Thanksgiving, but that doesn't make it any less interesting. The results of a new computer model developed by Burkhard Militzer and four coauthors suggest that deep inside the solar system's largest... More»
Feb. 12, 2009 | 06:17 PST | 14:17 UTC
Diagram of on-orbit satellite collision
Via spaceweather.com comes this diagram showing the orbits of the two satellites that collided on the 10th. They were in nearly perpendicular polar orbits. Space around Earth may be "crowded" but still this was a low-probability event by any... More»
Feb. 11, 2009 | 19:51 PST | Feb. 12 03:51 UTC
Two Earth-orbiting satellites collide
This is a big deal. It doesn't have any immediate ramifications for space science, but it's still a big deal. Two spacecraft -- one of them a functioning Iridium communications satellite, part of their satellite phone network, and the other one a... More»
Feb. 11, 2009 | 17:39 PST | Feb. 12 01:39 UTC
Dawn's really feeling Mars now
Dawn is scheduled to fly past Mars on February 18 at 00:29:06 UTC, a little under a week from now. In a few hours it'll be close enough to Mars that the force that Dawn feels from Mars' gravity is stronger than the force it feels from the Sun; that... More»
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
[ what is this? ]