Blog Archive
Phobos-Grunt: all but over, a letter from IKI
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/09 07:14 CST
A letter sent by Lev Zelenyi, director of the Russian Space Research Institute (IKI) to participants in the Phobos-Soil project about the mission's failure.
Mariner 9 approaching Mars: a movie!
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/09 01:32 CST
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Mariner 9's November 13, 1971 arrival at Mars, Daniel Macháček has produced a morphed animation of the images that Mars' first orbiter took while approaching the planet.
Notes on Dawn at Vesta from the 2011 American Geophysical Union meeting
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/08 03:19 CST
A report on the press briefing and talks from the Fall 2011 American Geophyisical Union meeting about the data on Vesta collected so far by Dawn.
Posted by A.J.S. Rayl on 2011/12/07 10:24 CST
Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has discovered gypsum and its "single most powerful piece of evidence for liquid water on Mars."
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/06 02:39 CST
Emily reports from the Fall 2011 American Geophyisical Union meeting about advancements in space weather prediction.
Sungrazing with Lovejoy's Comet
Posted by Jason Davis on 2011/12/06 10:42 CST
Observations of the newly sighted Kreutz sungrazer comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) from the ground and from SOHO (a joint NASA/ESA satellite) and STEREO (NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory).
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/05 04:13 CST
A report on a press briefing about Voyager 1 at the Fall 2011 American Geophyisical Union meeting. The spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space, which scientists are calling the stagnation region.
Curiosity, from a 1935 perspective
Posted by Jason Davis on 2011/12/03 01:49 CST
With a new rover, Curiosity, on its way to Mars, Jason Davis takes a look at what we knew - or thought we knew - about the planet back in 1935.
Reviews of space-themed books for kids ages 7 and up
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/02 01:06 CST
Reviews of books about space for children ages 7 to 11 and 12 and up.
ESA is ending ground station support for Phobos-Grunt
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/02 12:04 CST
After modifying two antennas and attempting to send commands to Phobos-Grunt for weeks without success, ESA has made the decision to stop tracking support.
First-ever high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar image of Enceladus
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/01 07:22 CST
On the November 6, 2011 flyby of Enceladus -- the third such flyby in just a few weeks -- the Cassini mission elected to take a SAR swath instead of using the optical instruments for once. So here it is: the first-ever SAR swath on Enceladus. In fact, the only other places we've ever done SAR imaging are Earth, the Moon, Venus, Iapetus, and Titan.
One-astronaut game of baseball in the International Space Station
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/01 07:18 CST
A fun video of Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa playing baseball aboard the ISS.
Dawn Journal: Riding gravitational currents to LAMO
Posted by Marc Rayman on 2011/12/01 04:05 CST
In this update on the Dawn mission, project system engineer Marc Rayman reports that the probe is headed for its low altitude mapping orbit (LAMO), where it will focus on making a census of the atomic constituents and on mapping the gravity field in order to determine Vesta's interior structure.
At last, I've finished my scale solar system presentation slide/poster
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/01 01:22 CST
A presentation providing a correctly scaled, reasonably correctly colored view of the largest bodies in the solar system is made available for use by teachers, professors, and informal educators.











