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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Dec. 4, 2008 | 12:07 PST | 20:07 UTC
More details on the delay of Mars Science Laboratory
It was a lengthy press briefing today, with the four bigwigs on the press panel being exceptionally long-winded. Here's the short version, which I'll follow up with more detail.Unanticipated problems, principally with the motors and gearboxes... More»
Dec. 4, 2008 | 09:01 PST | 17:01 UTC
Mars Science Laboratory is delayed two years
Mars Science Laboratory will not be ready for launch in October 2009 as planned. And since Mars launches are limited by the vagaries of celestial mechanics to launch periods spaced about two years apart, that means it cannot launch until the end of... More»
Dec. 3, 2008 | 19:17 PST | Dec. 4 03:17 UTC
Mmmmm....Space Beer
This sounds really good right about now...
Click to enlarge >Space BeerOn December 2, the Sapporo brewing company unveiled "Space Barley," a beer brewed from barley descended from barley grains that spent five months aboard the International Space... More»
Dec. 2, 2008 | 16:05 PST | Dec. 3 00:05 UTC
No one is listening for Phoenix anymore
After Phoenix fell silent on November 2, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that they'd carry on listening for faint transmissions from the spacecraft, using the two NASA orbiters, until the period of Mars conjunction began. Well, conjunction... More»
Dec. 2, 2008 | 14:56 PST | 22:56 UTC
Tracking spacecraft from Earth
Shortly after Chandrayaan-1 launched I received an email from a skeptical Indian saying "how can we really be sure that the spacecraft is as successful as the government is telling us it is?" I don't believe that the question was from the point of... More»
Nov. 30, 2008 | 09:36 PST | 17:36 UTC
Attention: South American and southern African observers needed for observations of a stellar occultation by Varuna
Varuna is one of the few formally named Kuiper belt objects because it's relatively large -- in fact, for a time, it was the second largest known object in the Kuiper belt, after Pluto. It's always difficult to know exactly how big such a distant... More»
Nov. 30, 2008 | 09:12 PST | 17:12 UTC
Dawn Journal: Aiming away from a bull's eye at Mars
Here's our monthly checkup with the Dawn mission, contributed by Marc Rayman, the mission's Project System Engineer. Thanks Marc! --ESL
by Dr. Marc D. Rayman
Dear Indawnviduals,
The Dawn spacecraft is healthy and on course for its flyby of Mars... More»
Nov. 29, 2008 | 14:02 PST | 22:02 UTC
Bulgaria in Space
In my most recent post on Chandrayaan-1 I mentioned the first results from the RADOM experiment, provided to the Indian mission by the nation of Bulgaria. I also mentioned that "I don't know anything about Bulgaria's previous contributions to... More»
Nov. 29, 2008 | 13:38 PST | 21:38 UTC
Carnival of Space #81
This week's carnival of space is live over at Tiny Mantras. Check it out!
And, while I'm linking to stuff, I'll mention that there is a new "From the Executive Director" commentary from Lou Friedman on the Roadmap for Human Space Exploration.... More»
Nov. 27, 2008 | 13:27 PST | 21:27 UTC
More science data from Chandrayaan-1, and some thermal issues on the spacecraft
The Indian Space Research Organisation just posted a few images containing the first publicly released data from two of the spacecraft's 11 instruments. We've previously seen images from its Terrain Mapping Camera and from the imager aboard its... More»
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