Casey Dreier • April 28, 2016
SpaceX's announcement that it will send Dragon capsules to Mars demonstrates the advantage of having a clear plan to explore the red planet. NASA should take note.
Van Kane • April 12, 2016
At a recent meeting of an advisory group for NASA, the Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS), Jim Green, the head of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, and Barry Goldstein from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, provided updates on plans to explore our solar system's ocean worlds.
Van Kane • March 21, 2016
This past week brought to the fore two challenges for NASA’s managers as they try to enable the richest possible mix of coming planetary missions. At stake are whether the agency will be able to select two Discovery missions from the current competition, and whether there will be the possibility of a mission selected for Enceladus and/or Titan in the next decade.
Meg Schwamb • March 04, 2016
Meg Schwamb highlights some of the upcoming space-based missions that will search for planets beyond our solar system.
Casey Dreier • February 08, 2016
NASA's 2017 budget request comes out on Tuesday, here's how you can evaluate if the budget for the Planetary Science Division is good or not. It's not just about 2017, but the next five years.
Van Kane • December 23, 2015
Van Kane details the potential repercussions of the launch delay of InSight Mars lander on the rest of NASA's Discovery mission program.
Casey Dreier • December 18, 2015
Congress's plan to fund the U.S. government in 2016 includes a stellar $1.3 billion increase for NASA over last year, nearly $730 million above the President's request.
Van Kane • October 09, 2015
Van Kane rounds up the missions selected to move onto the next round in NASA's Discovery proposal process.
Casey Dreier and Emily Lakdawalla • September 30, 2015
NASA announced the first-round selections for its next Discovery mission today. A total of five planetary mission concepts -- three targeted at asteroids, two at Venus -- will move to the next stage of the competition.
Casey Dreier • September 29, 2015
Learn all about a sustainable, affordable path to get humans to the Red Planet—a path that goes through Mars orbit and Phobos.
Van Kane • September 17, 2015
Three recently proposed low-cost space missions all aim to answer the same question: Where did Earth's abundant water come from?
Van Kane • September 08, 2015
The IceBreaker mission, proposed to NASA's Discovery program for low-cost missions, would seek out life on the northern plains of Mars.
Casey Dreier • September 02, 2015
Casey interviews Dr. Craig Hardgrove about his lunar CubeSat, how it came together, and how NASA’s support for small missions are important for early career scientists like himself.
Van Kane • August 25, 2015
NASA's Outer Planet Analysis Group is currently meeting to hear the agency's current plans and to provide the feedback of the scientific community on those plans.
Van Kane • August 10, 2015
Van Kane presents one of the three missions from the latest round of NASA Discovery proposals with the goal of exploring Mars' moons.
Van Kane • July 27, 2015
Van Kane rounds up some of the latest NASA Discovery mission proposals aiming to explore our solar system's smallest bodies.
Casey Dreier • July 23, 2015
Mars 2020, NASA’s next and yet-to-be-named Mars rover, will be the first mission to collect and prepare samples of the martian surface for return to Earth. The rover's engineering team has proposed a new sampling caching strategy that differs from previous concepts in some interesting ways.
Van Kane • May 08, 2015
In the last two months, there has been significant news about the European-Russian 2018 mission and about NASA’s 2020 rover. NASA also has announced that it would like to send a new orbiter to the Red Planet in the early 2020s.
Casey Dreier • May 05, 2015
Our friends at Explore Mars are live-streaming their Humans to Mars Summit this week, happening in Washington, D.C.
Casey Dreier • April 17, 2015
A study team at JPL will present their humans to Mars program concept at the Humans to Mars Summit and publish it as a peer-reviewed article in the New Space Journal.
Become a member of The Planetary Society and together we will create the future of space exploration.
Help advance robotic and human space exploration, defend our planet, and search for life.