Blog Archive

Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Emerges from Solar Conjunction to Wrap-Up Work on Matijevic Hill

Posted by A.J.S. Rayl on 2013/05/02 03:15 CDT | 1 comments

As the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) team waited out solar conjunction, Opportunity spent most of April atop the western rim of Endeavour Crater, conducting a chemical analysis of an ancient waterborne vein on Matijevic Hill. It was by the book until the last week of the month when the robot field geologist suffered an electronic "hiccup" known as a warm re-boot, and went into auto mode, a kind of safe mode when something doesn't go right.

Dawn journal: A low-orbit shortcut to Ceres

Posted by Marc Rayman on 2013/05/02 02:11 CDT

Marc Rayman's latest Dawn journal explains why Dawn is currently closer to the Sun than both Ceres and Vesta.

The White House Science Fair and an Earful for Bolden

Posted by Bill Nye on 2013/05/01 11:53 CDT | 7 comments

I meet the future of science in the United States, and I speak directly to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden about my concerns for Planetary Science funding.

Planetary Society Hangout: Naming Bennu, with Mike Puzio and Dante Lauretta

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/05/01 09:51 CDT | 2 comments

In this week's Hangout, Emily Lakdawalla hosted Mike Puzio and Dante Lauretta in a discussion about the naming of OSIRIS-REx' asteroid target.

We have a winner! The OSIRIS-REx asteroid's name is: Bennu!

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/05/01 09:37 CDT

We received more than 8000 entries from all over the world in the Name That Asteroid contest, and we can finally announce the winner. The asteroid formerly known as 1999 RQ36 is now formally named (101955) Bennu, for a heron associated with the Egyptian god Osiris.

2011 HM₁₀₂: A new companion for Neptune

Posted by Alex Parker on 2013/04/30 04:20 CDT | 2 comments

This month my latest paper made it to print in the Astronomical Journal. It's a short piece that describes a serendipitous discovery that my collaborators and I made while searching for a distant Kuiper Belt Object for the New Horizons spacecraft to visit after its 2015 Pluto flyby.