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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Mar. 17, 2011 | 18:16 PDT | Mar. 18 01:16 UTC
MESSENGER successfully entered orbit at Mercury!
Just a brief post to announce that at 01:00 UTC MESSENGER completed a 15-minute burn of its main engines to enter orbit at Mercury! According to mission controllers, all indications from the low-rate telemetry received through the spacecraft's... More»
Mar. 17, 2011 | 16:15 PDT | 23:15 UTC
Mercury: a moon-scale body
As I wait for the MESSENGER Mercury Orbit Insertion webcast to start, I thought I'd fiddle with some images to point out that Mercury is a bridge between the scales of planets and the scales of moons. Here's a collage of the eight bodies in the... More»
Mar. 17, 2011 | 12:11 PDT | 19:11 UTC
How to follow MESSENGER's orbit insertion today
The day is finally here! In only five and a half hours, at 00:45 on March 18 (according to the spacecraft's clock), MESSENGER must ignite its main engine and run though a third of its fuel in only 15 minutes in order to enter its planned orbit... More»
Mar. 17, 2011 | 09:22 PDT | 16:22 UTC
LPSC 2011: Day 4: Ted Stryk on icy moons and The Moon
Here are Ted Stryk's notes from the sessions he attended in the afternoon of Thursday, March 10, at the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Thanks Ted! --ESLTed Stryk over Europaby Ted Stryk
I spent the morning at the Lunar and Planetary... More»
Mar. 16, 2011 | 20:39 PDT | Mar. 17 03:39 UTC
Nick Schneider: Notes on an earthquake
I got the following account of the earthquake in Japan in my inbox this morning from Nick Schneider, a friend and planetary astronomer who had just departed a planetary science conference in Sendai on Friday, March 11, 2011 when the magnitude 9.0... More»
Mar. 16, 2011 | 14:55 PDT | 21:55 UTC
Stardust: Decommissioning planned for March 24
Stardust (probably) has only a week remaining in its operational lifetime, according to a status report just posted to the mission website:The spacecraft continues its post-encounter cruise. All subsystems continue to operate as expected. The team... More»
Mar. 16, 2011 | 10:39 PDT | 17:39 UTC
LPSC 2011: Analysis of the grains returned by Hayabusa
I'd been despairing of finding a good source for a writeup of the presentations in the Hayabusa session at last week's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, but am happy to report that I've finally found an excellent one. Last week's session was... More»
Mar. 15, 2011 | 13:57 PDT | 20:57 UTC
Two days from MESSENGER's Mercury arrival
Today the MESSENGER team briefed the press on the impending arrival of their spacecraft at Mercury. This briefing is the one that is intended to help media who have not been paying attention get up to speed, so while I listened in I didn't expect... More»
Mar. 15, 2011 | 11:57 PDT | 18:57 UTC
LPSC 2011: Kirby Runyon on Mars, the Moon, Hartley 2, and Ganymede
Kirby Runyon is a longtime blog reader and commenter who recently followed his interest in space to graduate school; he's a second-year grad student at Temple University in Philadelpha, researching fault-controlled fluid flow at the Cerberus Fossae... More»
Mar. 14, 2011 | 12:07 PDT | 19:07 UTC
The curse of living on a geologically active planet
As the disaster of the magnitude 8.9 Sendai quake of Friday, March 11, at 05:46:23 UTC continues to unfold in Japan, I have been unable to tear my attention away. Over the weekend I've heard much good news about the safety of many friends there,... More»
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