Blog Archive

The Moon transiting Earth, as seen from Deep Impact

Pretty picture: a moon transit

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/02/21 05:52 CST | 5 comments

A reader comment inspired me to dig up an oldie but a goodie: a sequence of photos of the Moon transiting Earth, seen from a very long way away,

Planetary Society Hangout Thursday, Feb 21st at noon PST. The Sequester at NASA with Jon Morse

Posted by Casey Dreier on 2013/02/21 02:00 CST | 1 comments

How will the Sequester effect NASA? Dr. Jon Morse, former Director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA, will help us understand the cuts, the process, and the hard decisions being made right now.

Webcast Tonight! Planetary Scientist and Society President Jim Bell

Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2013/02/20 07:59 CST

Professor Bell's topic is "Exploring Mars, the Moon, Asteroids, and Comets with Rovers and Landers," and there is no one better to talk about this subject.

Drilled sample in Curiosity's scoop at last

Curiosity update, sol 193: drilled stuff is in the scoop, ready for analysis

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/02/20 06:36 CST

There was a press briefing today to announce that Curiosity has completed her last major first-time activity: powder drilled from inside a rock at John Klein successfully made its way into the CHIMRA sample handling mechanism in the turret. Sol 193, then, marks the day that Curiosity is finally ready to start the science mission.

Brother, Can You Spare $1B for a Planetary Space Telescope?

Posted by Van Kane on 2013/02/20 12:29 CST | 2 comments

Imagine you had a Hubble-class telescope and could use in any way you wanted to explore planets. What would you do with it?

Goldstone radar images of asteroid 2012 DA14

Why don't we have any photos of asteroid 2012 DA14 if it came so close?

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/02/19 03:13 CST | 2 comments

A frequently-asked question last week was: if asteroid 2012 DA14 is coming so close to Earth, why hasn't anyone taken any pictures of it? Now that 2012 DA14 has whizzed past us, we do finally have some radar pictures of it, but they still may not satisfy everyone.