Blog Archive

Planetary Radio Live Celebrates Curiosity/Truly Haute Cuisine!

Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2012/12/20 04:06 CST

Listen to or watch the webcast recorded Saturday, December 15th with MSL Project Manager Richard Cook and Project Scientist John Grotzinger. Bonus: enjoy a neat little French animation.

Watch Planetary Radio LIVE on Saturday!

Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2012/12/15 11:10 CST | 1 comments

Watch the live show at 2pm Pacific on Saturday, December 15 to see Bill Nye, Emily Lakdawalla and the leaders of the Mars Science Laboratory rover mission.

Curiosity's SAM instrument, from the side (side panel removed)

More than you probably wanted to know about Curiosity's SAM instrument

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/11/30 12:31 CST | 24 comments

With all the hoopla surrounding the unknown results of the first analysis of a soil sample by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, I thought an explainer would be useful. What is SAM, what is it designed to measure, and what is the nature of its results? Here you go.

VIDEOS: Nye & Teens in Space as Curiosity Lands in Hi-Def!

Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2012/09/19 12:06 CDT | 2 comments

Losing your enthusiasm for space exploration and science? Watch these new and terrific videos for an exhilarating shot of Vitamin S.

Thursday: Watch Bill Nye Host YouTube SpaceLab Webcast

Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2012/09/11 04:55 CDT

The Planetary Society CEO goes to London to MC a live conversation with ISS astronaut Sunita Williams and the kids who've had their experiments conducted in orbit.

Thumbnail OSETI Telescope Primary Mirror

Optical SETI Gets a Major Upgrade

Posted by Bruce Betts on 2012/08/30 03:57 CDT | 5 comments

The Planetary Society Optical SETI Telescope in Harvard, Massachusetts just got a major upgrade of its electronics. The telescope, which has been operating the only all-sky optical SETI survey since its opening in 2006, is run by Harvard University Professor Paul Horowitz and his team. The telescope scans the sky every clear night with a 72-inch primary mirror, looking for laser pulses as short as one billionth of a second that could be transmitted by distant extraterrestrials. When observing, it has been able to process 1 terabit (trillion bits) of data every second, that’s as much as in all the books in print every second.