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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Feb. 14, 2011 | 21:19 PST | Feb. 15 05:19 UTC
Stardust update: Things seem to have gone well with Tempel 1 flyby
Just a brief update on the Stardust flyby of Tempel 1, which happened about half an hour ago: the spacecraft seems to have executed the flyby as commanded and has 72 science images on board. The dust flux monitor recorded impacts through closest... More»
Feb. 14, 2011 | 15:42 PST | 23:42 UTC
Stardust flies by Tempel 1 in 5 hours, and I'll be watching!
Stardust is very close to the last major act of its mission: the flyby of Tempel 1, which will take place at 20:40 PST (04:40 UTC). Here's a summary of the recent and current status of the mission, and how to follow the events over the next 24... More»
Feb. 14, 2011 | 12:35 PST | 20:35 UTC
Happy Valentine's day from Mars
Lots of people are posting Valentine's day images with the heart-shaped island Galešnjak on Earth or this 3D anaglyph heart from the Moon or a splotch on Mars, but longtime readers will know I hate to do what everyone else is doing. So I dug around... More»
Feb. 10, 2011 | 13:38 PST | 21:38 UTC
Snapshots from Space: Voyager views of the Great Red Spot, Björn Jónsson
I've got a new column in the Planetary Society's member magazine, The Planetary Report, called "Snapshots from Space." In each issue I'll be highlighting one really cool amateur-processed image. I'm excited to have the opportunity to help these... More»
Feb. 10, 2011 | 10:06 PST | 18:06 UTC
Stardust update: Almost to Tempel 1
We're coming up on the final days of Stardust's approach to Tempel 1. The flyby takes place on February 15 at 04:56 UTC (February 14 at 20:56 PST). There's still time to enter the "Are We There Yet?" contest and win a Stardust T-shirt! In an... More»
Feb. 9, 2011 | 11:47 PST | 19:47 UTC
Google Mars base maps available for Opportunity's future traverse
Thanks to the work of several amateurs, Google Mars is a great tool for following the past and future peregrinations of the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. I've written about this before; today's update concerns some new image layers that the... More»
Feb. 8, 2011 | 11:49 PST | 19:49 UTC
Close approach to Earth turns Apollo into Aten
Last week we got buzzed by a very small asteroid, something that happens fairly often (in fact, there's another tiny close approacher incoming now). But there were several details that made the close approach of asteroid 2011 CQ1 worthy of note. ... More»
Feb. 7, 2011 | 15:35 PST | 23:35 UTC
Some recent pictures of Saturn's northern storm
I've written here before about the huge storm that's spreading across so much of Saturn that it's been readily visible even from Earth-based telescopes. Over the past couple of days a couple of new images of Saturn have appeared that show just how... More»
Feb. 7, 2011 | 13:09 PST | 21:09 UTC
How much is Vesta's geology controlled by its one huge impact feature?
Here's a neat paper just published in Geophysical Research Letters: "Mega-ejecta on asteroid Vesta." In it, Martin Jutzi and Erik Asphaug consider Vesta's shape -- which appears to be dominated by a very large impact crater centered at its south... More»
Feb. 4, 2011 | 11:17 PST | 19:17 UTC
More on Kepler exoplanet discoveries
Here's some links to some good followup stories on Wednesday's Kepler press briefing:By Amir Alexander, for the Planetary Society: "Kepler Discoveries Suggest a Galaxy Rich in Life"By Phil Plait, for Discover: " Motherlode of potential planets... More»
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