Blog Archive

MESSENGER artist's concept at Mercury entering orbit

MESSENGER Mission Update: First burn performed to lower extended mission altitude

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/16 07:58 CDT

The MESSENGER mission just issued a press release announcing that they have completed the first step in the two-step process of lowering the spacecraft's orbit around Mercury.

Test Your Planetary Knowledge and Learn More

Posted by Bruce Betts on 2012/04/16 06:30 CDT | 3 comments

If you want to test your planetary knowledge, or just have a masochistic love of tests, I’ve posted the midterm I’ve given to my students in my online Introductory Astronomy and Planetary Science class at California State University Dominguez Hills.

Pretty pictures from Cassini's weekend flybys of Enceladus and Tethys

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/16 03:11 CDT

Cassini flew past both Enceladus and Tethys on April 14. Here's a cool animation of its approach to Enceladus' plumes, and a pretty global picture of Tethys.

NASA collects round three of CCDev proposals

Posted by Jason Davis on 2012/04/13 08:15 CDT

NASA is soliciting a third round of proposals from private spaceflight companies looking to send astronauts to the International Space Station.

Of inclinations and azimuths

Posted by Jason Davis on 2012/04/11 12:29 CDT

A classified U.S. military satellite recently launched into an orbital inclination of 123 degrees. What makes this trajectory so unique? Pondering the answer affords the opportunity to learn some deceptively tricky concepts about the nature of all spacecraft orbits.

Pretty Pictures: Amazing Asteroid Lutetia

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/10 02:00 CDT

A long-awaited data set is finally public (well, long-awaited by me, at least). The Rosetta team has now published their data from the July 10, 2010 flyby of asteroid (21) Lutetia. This data set is absolutely stunning, and my friends in the amateur image processing community wasted no time in creating art out of it.