Blog Archive

If we started today, how long would it take to get to Mars? With this budget, never.

Posted by Casey Dreier on 2013/06/19 04:38 CDT

The House of Representatives held a hearing today to discuss their proposed NASA authorization bill, which would fund Planetary Science, cut Earth Science, forbid asteroid retrieval, and command NASA to pursue a path to Mars via the Moon.

Enormously detailed photo of Kasei Valles from Mars Express

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/06/19 02:36 CDT

ESA celebrated the tenth anniversary of Mars Express' launch with a several-day science meeting during which they issued lots of press releases and numerous spectacular photos. My favorite of them all is this enormous image of Kasei Valles on Mars.

A Little Moonlight

Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/06/19 01:33 CDT

From far away, or from so near you could almost touch it, the moon is beautiful.

Woohoo! The LEGO Curiosity rover is going to be a kit!

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/06/18 07:02 CDT

The awesome LEGO Curiosity rover designed by Stephen Pakbaz is going to go into production!

Goodnight, Herschel Space Observatory

Posted by Jason Davis on 2013/06/18 01:29 CDT | 4 comments

The European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory received its final commands yesterday, having depleted the liquid helium required to make its infrared observations.

Io and Europa from New Horizons (Emily Lakdawalla's version)

Favorite space images: "Many Worlds"

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/06/17 10:58 CDT | 1 comments

For this evening's Planetary Radio Live event, Mat Kaplan asked me to do a presentation of some favorite space images. I told him that picking favorite space images is like picking favorite children; it's not possible because they're all my favorite. To narrow things down, I decided to explore a theme: "Many Worlds."