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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Dec. 8, 2008 | 10:58 PST | 18:58 UTC
What's up in the solar system for the week of December 8: Getting ready for AGU
It's been a month since I checked in with our active planetary spacecraft; let's go again from the innermost to the outermost reaches of the solar system and see what's going on. One of the most important meetings for planetary scientists, the... More»
Dec. 5, 2008 | 10:01 PST | 18:01 UTC
MESSENGER steers for next September's Mercury flyby
The MESSENGER team issued a statement yesterday to the effect that the Mercury-bound spacecraft has just performed the first part of a two-part Deep Space Maneuver to position the spacecraft on course for a third flyby of the innermost planet. ... More»
Dec. 4, 2008 | 15:06 PST | 23:06 UTC
Let's go to Mars together
Amid the lengthy discussion of cost overruns and schedule delays on Mars Science Laboratory came a surprise announcement that is as important as it is welcome: NASA and ESA administrators have agreed in principle to cooperate on future Mars... More»
Dec. 4, 2008 | 15:02 PST | 23:02 UTC
Hubble servicing mission now scheduled for May 12, 2009
NASA just announced (in their third press release today) that the Hubble Servicing Mission is now rescheduled for May 12, 2009. (See this post for the history of the delay of this mission.) The release states that "The final servicing mission to... More»
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»
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