Mat Kaplan • January 31, 2012
Bruce Betts will be returning to the virtual classroom at California State University, Dominguez Hills for an Intro To Astronomy course. The first lecture will be Wednesday, February 8, from 3:00 to 4:30pm Pacific Time.
Louis D. Friedman • January 31, 2012
Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, has released its official report concerning the failure of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which fell back to Earth from orbit on January 15 after failing to ignite the engines that were to take it to the largest Martian moon.
Emily Lakdawalla • January 31, 2012
I think the word for the month of February is: "routine." The 21 missions that I'm tracking (amounting to 24 spacecraft) are nearly all in routine science operations or cruise behavior, gathering data from across the solar system or journeying to new destinations.
Emily Lakdawalla • January 31, 2012
Japan's Venus climate orbiter Akatsuki failed to enter orbit in December 2010 when a clogged valve caused catastrophic damage to its main engine. Since then, JAXA's engineers and navigators have determined that although the main engine is a total loss, there is the possibility of achieving Venus orbit on a future encounter, using only the attitude control rockets.
A.J.S. Rayl • January 31, 2012
As Opportunity worked away on its winter science campaign, the Mars Exploration Rover mission quietly completed its eighth Earth year of exploring the surface of the Red Planet last week, and is now roving on into Year 9 of its 90-day mission.
Marc Rayman • January 30, 2012
Since the last log, the robotic explorer Dawn has devoted most of its time to its two primary scientific objectives in this phase of the mission.
Emily Lakdawalla • January 29, 2012
They Might Be Giants present "What Is a Shooting Star?"
Amir Alexander • January 27, 2012
A review of Robert H. Gray's "The Elusive Wow: Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence."
Mat Kaplan • January 26, 2012
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast begins this year's effort with an interview with Bruce Betts, who will be starting an online astronomy course. A transcription of the interview is included in this post, as well as a link to the podcast.
Jason Davis • January 26, 2012
Before automated space observatories like SDO could send pictures and videos of solar phenomenon in real-time, humans had to do it manually, as in the case of the groundbreaking Skylab space station missions, which featured the Apollo Telescope Mount.
Emily Lakdawalla • January 26, 2012
I ran into a semantic problem today: what to call the science of studying liquids on Titan?
Charlene Anderson • January 25, 2012
The Cosmos Award for Public Presentation of Science -- at least the blown-glass Saturn trophy given to Stephen Hawking by The Planetary Society -- continues to appear around the Internet.
Emily Lakdawalla • January 25, 2012
Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that after beginning with Dawn last week, I've kept my fingers busy, stitching more spacecraft from plastic canvas. I now have prototypes for GRAIL, New Horizons, and MESSENGER.
Emily Lakdawalla • January 24, 2012
On February 24, 2007, the Rosetta spacecraft passed by Mars, the second of four planetary gravity-assist flybys on its long route to a 2014 rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. At the time, they released two photos from the main science camera, OSIRIS.
Emily Lakdawalla • January 23, 2012
Today Opportunity sent back to Earth the last few frames of the "deck pan" self-portrait she took during the waning days of 2011. Her solar panels are very dusty, which isn't helpful. It's near winter solstice in her southern location on Mars, so the angled Sun is not providing as much power as it would in a different season.
Emily Lakdawalla • January 23, 2012
At the end of last week, a rather sensational article appeared in both the Russian- and English-language sites of the Russian news agency, RIA Novosti. "Life Spotted on Venus - Russian Scientist," ran the English headline; a Google translation of the Russian one goes: "The Soviet probes may have photographed creatures on Venus."
Charlene Anderson • January 20, 2012
Catching up on my blog reading today, I turned to "Cosmic Log," science writer Alan Boyle's must-read column on msnbc.com. Today's entry is titled "Stephen Hawking's curios explained."
Emily Lakdawalla • January 20, 2012
From 1981 to 1997, the Galileo mission published an approximately quarterly newsletter called the Galileo Messenger. It eventually ran to 45 issues, until the end of the Prime Mission. The first 20 were published before Galileo ever got off the ground. That period is the subject of this post.
Emily Lakdawalla • January 19, 2012
This week's lineup is a largely astronomical crowd so most of the conversation concerned dark matter and boiling exoplanets and imaging the black hole at the center of our galaxy.
Emily Lakdawalla • January 19, 2012
Tune in soon (in 10 minutes, as I post this) to Fraser Cain's Google+ page for the weekly Space Hangout.
Become a member of The Planetary Society and together we will create the future of space exploration.
LightSail 2 will launch aboard the SpaceX Falcon Heavy. Be part of this epic point in space exploration history!