Emily Lakdawalla • October 20, 2017
Three years ago, on October 19, 2014, comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring passed within 138,000 kilometers of Mars. At the 2017 meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, we heard a progress report on Mars orbiter imaging of the comet's nucleus.
Jason Davis • October 11, 2017
Haumea has a ring! Two telescopes used in the discovery—one in Slovenia, and one in Italy—received funding from The Planetary Society's Shoemaker Near Earth Object (NEO) Grant program, which helps amateur astronomers find, track and characterize near-Earth asteroids.
Jason Callahan • October 11, 2017
Planetary Society Policy Adviser Jason Callahan summarizes his paper he presented at the 2017 International Astronautical Congress in Australia, where he examined NASA's low-cost Discovery program and how federal policies directed at higher education initially bolstered planetary science into a viable field.
Ian Regan • October 10, 2017
Amateur image processor Ian Regan shares the story of processing Cassini's final images of the ringed planet.
Van Kane • October 09, 2017
Van Kane brings us newly released details of the Venus Origins eXplorer (VOX), one of NASA's 12 New Frontiers mission proposals.
Casey Dreier • October 07, 2017
As a service to our members and to promote transparency, The Planetary Society's Space Policy and Advocacy team publishes quarterly reports on their activities, actions, priorities, and goals in service of their efforts to promote space science and exploration in Washington, D.C.
Jason Wright • October 06, 2017
One of the reasons SETI is hard is that we don’t know exactly what we are looking for, and part of that difficulty is that we still aren’t sure of who we are. An astronomer and an anthropologist team up to explore how cultural myopia shape what we can find in the cosmos.
Casey Dreier and Jason Davis • October 05, 2017
Vice President Mike Pence kicked off the National Space Council's first meeting today by declaring Americans will return to the Moon. Casey Dreier and Jason Davis analyze this new direction for NASA's human spaceflight program.
Marc Rayman • October 04, 2017
A decade after leaving its first home in the solar system, Dawn is healthy and successful at its current residence around Ceres.
Emily Lakdawalla • October 02, 2017
India's Mars Orbiter Mission has now completed three years in orbit at Mars, and ISRO celebrated the anniversary by releasing the mission's second-year data to the public. Emily Lakdawalla spent a week downloading and processing data for your enjoyment.
A.J.S. Rayl • October 02, 2017
The Martian winter began to grip Endeavour Crater in September, slowing Opportunity's pace. But she braved the brutal cold in Perseverance Valley and followed her commands to visually document everything in sight.
Bruce Betts • October 02, 2017
Bruce Betts provides a guide to all total solar eclipses through the end of the 2020s, with dates and locations.
Jason Davis • September 29, 2017
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk presented an updated version of his Mars colonization plans today, during a widely anticipated talk at the 68th International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia.
Emily Lakdawalla • September 28, 2017
As expected, OSIRIS-REx's Earth flyby on September 22 was a success. The mission is slowly releasing beautiful images of our home worlds taken by its many cameras following the flyby.
Max Fagin • September 28, 2017
Making Mars habitable will require us to master the conversion of raw Martian materials into resources we can use to survive. Fortunately, Mars has a wealth of usable materials, making it one of the most human-habitable places in the solar system, other than Earth itself.
Donna Stevens • September 27, 2017
The Fall 2017 issue of The Planetary Report is in the mail and available online now to our members!
Jason Davis • September 25, 2017
In a review of Star Trek: Discovery, Jason Davis says he expected Discovery to be a cross between Enterprise and the new reboot movies. Instead, the show turned out to be something else entirely.
Anatoly Zak • September 25, 2017
A Canadian Space Agency proposal would install a solar sail on the outside of the Deep Space Gateway, a miniature space station in lunar orbit.
Emily Lakdawalla • September 22, 2017
Today in London, Emily Lakdawalla was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of the University by The Open University.
Jason Davis • September 21, 2017
Two of NASA's new astronaut candidates are particularly suited to conduct scientific research on other worlds: Zena Cardman, a geobiologist, and Jessica Watkins, a geologist.
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