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Meet our bloggers...CEO, Bill Nye, Emily Lakdawalla, Bruce Betts, Mat Kaplan, Casey Dreier, and a host of expert and entertaining voices from throughout our vast space community.

Browse Recent Blog Posts

Women of the Science Team for NASA's Europa Multiple Flyby mission

Women on Spacecraft Missions: Are we moving towards parity with the percentage in the field?

Posted by Julie Rathbun on 2016/09/16 09:01 CDT

How far have we come and how far do we still need to go to welcome women into planetary science, and, particularly, spacecraft missions?

Successful launch for China's Tiangong-2 space station

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2016/09/15 09:37 CDT

Today, China launched its second modular space station, Tiangong 2.

One year remains in the Cassini mission

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2016/09/15 09:27 CDT | 5 comments

Cassini ends a year from today, which is sad. But the final year of the mission is going to be awesome.

Gaia's first galaxy map

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2016/09/14 02:45 CDT | 3 comments

The astronomy world is abuzz today because of ESA's announcement of the first release of data from the Gaia mission. Gaia is a five-year mission that will eventually measure the positions and motions of billions of stars; this first data release includes positions for 1.1 billion of them, and proper motions for 2 million.

A deep dive into the highest-resolution Voyager Jupiter data

Posted by Björn Jónsson on 2016/09/14 08:00 CDT

A few weeks before the first Juno high resolution imaging, I decided to take a look at Voyager color images at various resolutions, with particular attention to high-resolution mosaics.

Cassini's camera views of Titan's polar lakes in summer, processed into pseudocolor

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2016/09/12 01:50 CDT | 1 comment

Titan's north polar lakes are well-lit by summer sun in these recent Cassini images. Image processing enthusiast Ian Regan shares his recipe for processing the longer-wavelength Titan images into visually pleasing "pseudocolor."

Rosetta end-of-mission update

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2016/09/09 12:40 CDT | 5 comments

The European Space Agency has shared plans for the end of the Rosetta mission scheduled for September 30, just three weeks from now. The landing site will be located on the "head" of the comet, next to a prominent pit now named Deir el-Medina.

Field Report From Mars: Sol 4482 - September 2, 2016

Posted by Larry Crumpler on 2016/09/09 09:04 CDT

Opportunity is about to leave Marathon Valley for good and head south into the next valley, marking the beginning of the current extended mission plan.

OSIRIS-REx blazes into evening sky, starting journey to asteroid Bennu

Posted by Jason Davis on 2016/09/08 08:56 CDT | 5 comments

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is safely en route to asteroid Bennu following an evening liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Carrying names of 440,000 well-wishers, OSIRIS-REx ready for journey to Bennu and back

Posted by Jason Davis on 2016/09/07 12:24 CDT | 7 comments

OSIRIS-REx is ready to begin its journey to Bennu and back. The asteroid was named by a Planetary Society contest winner, and the spacecraft bears the names of 440,000 well-wishers.