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The Planetary Society Weblog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Apr. 17, 2007 | 10:59 PDT | 17:59 UTC
Recognizing the real face of Mars
It's inevitable that whenever a new orbiter arrives at Mars, the public will demand a photo of "the Face." Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has just delivered on this popularly demanded photo, and has shown it (as Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey... More»
Apr. 16, 2007 | 13:34 PDT | 20:34 UTC
The March / April issue of The Planetary Report is now online
This issue has been out for a while, but I neglected to upload it until now. Members, go to the For Members section of this site and get a lovely PDF copy of the latest issue of The Planetary Report, which features the European Space Agency's... More»
Apr. 16, 2007 | 12:50 PDT | 19:50 UTC
Optical illusions at Saturn
Two recent images from the Cassini mission caught my attention because of the way they play tricks on the eye. The first one was released today by the imaging team, and was taken nearly ten months ago:Click to enlarge >Strange lighting on Tethys... More»
Apr. 13, 2007 | 14:57 PDT | 21:57 UTC
Human and Spacecraft Errors Together Doomed Mars Global Surveyor
The review board that was convened to look in to what caused the loss of Mars Global Surveyor has issued their preliminary report, and it's a sad one: it wasn't aging hardware that failed. Instead, the root cause was human error. I've got a full... More»
Apr. 12, 2007 | 12:34 PDT | 19:34 UTC
Final preparations for Dawn's mission to Ceres and Vesta are under way
The Dawn spacecraft arrived in Florida on Monday morning, ahead of a planned June 30 launch. (There was recently a slight delay from a planned June 19 launch due to the availability of the launch vehicle.) To me, a spacecraft's arrival in Florida... More»
Apr. 12, 2007 | 10:52 PDT | 17:52 UTC
The not-so-turbulent wake region near Jupiter's Great Red Spot
A new set of images appeared on the New Horizons raw image website the other day, focused on the region to the north and west of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. This mosaic -- assembled here by a space enthusiast who goes by "Orion" -- was intended to be... More»
Apr. 11, 2007 | 17:48 PDT | Apr. 12 00:48 UTC
Antiope, a true binary asteroid
This appears to be my week for finally facing some complicated topics that I've been putting off for a while. Sometimes I just post pretty pictures; but I can't get away with that for all interesting stories. Many times, a press release arrives in... More»
Apr. 10, 2007 | 18:17 PDT | Apr. 11 01:17 UTC
Venus' frustrating clouds
Venus is a cloudy planet. The same is true of most planets in the solar system, actually; all we can see of the gas giants are clouds, of course. Among the terrestrial planets, Earth and Mars both have some part of their surfaces hidden by clouds... More»
Apr. 9, 2007 | 14:30 PDT | 21:30 UTC
Dione's south pole
Cassini got a nice "Voyager-class" view of Saturn's moon Dione yesterday, passing about 250,000 kilometers from the moon's south pole. As is typical for these flybys, the images include a nice set through many filters, which the imaging team can... More»
Apr. 9, 2007 | 11:25 PDT | 18:25 UTC
More details on the status of Hayabusa
Last week I mentioned that JAXA is talking about an attempt for Hayabusa to return to Earth. An English translation of a press release dated April 4 showed up on the JAXA website over the weekend with some fascinating details; Hayabusa continues to... More»
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