Blog Archive

Permanently shadowed, radar-bright regions on Mercury

LPSC 2013: Seeing in Permanent Shadow

Posted by Michael Poston on 2013/04/03 01:21 CDT | 1 comments

The case for water ice hidden in permanently shadowed regions at the north pole of the planet Mercury received another boost recently. On Wednesday March 20, 2013 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Nancy Chabot presented the very first visible-light images of what is in the shadows of these polar craters.

Conceptual design for an asteroid capture and retrieval spacecraft

Bringing an Asteroid Home

Posted by Van Kane on 2013/04/03 01:08 CDT | 6 comments

Aviation Week and Space Technology reports that the President’s next budget request for NASA will include funds to begin developing a mission to bring an asteroid to the Earth-moon system. The initial goal will be to provide a destination for a manned mission to an asteroid, but if the idea works, it could kick start asteroid mining.

Robot Shaming

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/04/03 11:14 CDT | 2 comments

Some silly fun to brighten your Wednesday.

False-color Matijevic Hill Vista (Opportunity 2013-01-24)

Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Hunkers Down for Solar Conjunction, Final Science on Matijevic Hill

Posted by A.J.S. Rayl on 2013/04/02 02:07 CDT | 5 comments

As the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission trekked further into its tenth year of exploring the Red Planet, Opportunity spent the month of March finishing up its science investigations on Matijevic Hill.