Blogs
Guest blogs from 2013
On space kindness and the Chelyabinsk meteor
Posted by Vitaliy Egorov on 2013/10/04 07:04 CDT | 1 comments
Through an act of kindness, we now have images of the Chelyabinsk meteor trail from Russia's Elektro-L satellite.
I cannot volunteer my time to work on NASA business during the furlough
Posted by Les Johnson on 2013/10/03 11:55 CDT | 7 comments
Today I received my furlough notice from NASA. Since my job isn’t considered “excepted,” in other words, since no one will be injured or die if I don’t report for work, then I am to remain at home until recalled to work after the Congress passes and the President signs some sort of budget or continuing resolution to keep the government running.
Women scientists: Tell Your Story and Inspire Others in Astronomy
Posted by Hadiza Mohammed on 2013/10/01 04:06 CDT | 2 comments
Women Rock Science is working with the Knowledge Observatory to create an interactive display of women in astronomy from all over the world for an upcoming science festival.
Posted by David Shortt on 2013/09/27 01:30 CDT | 10 comments
With the recent announcement by NASA that the 36 year-old spacecraft Voyager 1 has officially entered interstellar space at a distance from the sun about four times further than Neptune's orbit, and with Voyager 2 not far behind, it seems worthwhile to explore how humans managed to fling objects so far into space.
Posted by Geraint Jones on 2013/09/26 05:02 CDT
Recently, almost a thousand researchers gathered in London for Europe’s annual meeting of planetary scientists. Here's a report from one session on cometary science.
Bill Nye 'Dancing With the Stars' Update
Posted by Abigail Fraeman on 2013/09/25 01:52 CDT
We're two weeks in to ‘Dancing with the Stars’ season 17, and Bill Nye has shown that, true to his TV-theme song lyric, "science rules" in the eyes of the audience.
Posted by Stephen J. Pyne on 2013/09/25 11:15 CDT | 2 comments
The Voyagers were special when they launched. They have become more so thanks to their longevity, the breadth of their discoveries, the cultural payload they carried, and the sheer audacity of their quest.
Dawn on Mars: Waypoint 1 Mysteries
Posted by Dawn Sumner on 2013/09/24 06:38 CDT
Dawn Sumner describes the preparations for maximizing the science at Curiosity's short stop at "Waypoint 1" from sols 385 to 401.
Field Report From Mars: Sol 3431 - September 18, 2013
Posted by Larry Crumpler on 2013/09/18 11:27 CDT | 2 comments
On sol 3425 Opportunity "waded ashore" at Solander Point after crossing a sea of sand between here and Cape York. Cape York was an "island" remnant of the rim of Endeavour crater that Opportunity left back in May. Since then it has been driving south to the next largest and mountainous remnant of the crater rim, Solander Point.
Working Together - Scientists & Historians, Professionals & Amateurs
Posted by Fran Bagenal on 2013/09/18 10:53 CDT
From October 6 to 11, two divisions of the American Astronomical Society - Planetary Science and History - are meeting together for a combined annual conference. There will be several opportunities for the public to participate: a free public talk, several webcast lectures, a special online event for the Juno flyby of Earth, and a pro-am workshop on how amateur astronomers can contribute to planetary science.
Curiosity update: AutoNav toward Mount Sharp, sols 373-383
Posted by Ken Herkenhoff on 2013/09/05 02:49 CDT
From sols 373 to 383 (August 23 to September 3, 2013), Curiosity traveled about 250 meters toward Mount Sharp over five drives, trying out her new AutoNav capability.
Bill Nye takes to the dance floor
Posted by Abigail Fraeman on 2013/09/04 11:51 CDT | 2 comments
It was announced this morning that Bill will be appearing as a contestant on the American hit show, “Dancing with the Stars”. I am so excited. "How will Bill fare?" you may ask. Consider the following...
Mars, Old and New: A Personal View by Bruce Murray
Posted by Jennifer Vaughn on 2013/09/03 06:07 CDT | 1 comments
An interview with Bruce Murray from 2001 about his perspectives on Mars science and exploration: past, present, and future.
Posted by Louis D. FriedmanCharlene Anderson on 2013/08/29 11:32 CDT | 52 comments
One of the most remarkable minds of 20th century exploration was stilled this morning, August 29, 2013, when Bruce C. Murray died of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 81. The Planetary Society owes its existence to Bruce.
Posted by Sarah Hörst on 2013/08/26 03:14 CDT | 11 comments
By now I hope that everyone has seen some of the spectacular images of the Saturn system (and especially Titan!) from the Cassini-Huygens mission. However, the measurements that often make my heart race are taken by instruments that reveal Titan in ways that our eyes cannot see.
New Horizons: Late in Cruise, and a Binary Ahoy
Posted by Alan Stern on 2013/08/24 09:16 CDT | 2 comments
New Horizons has just completed a summer of intensive activities and entered hibernation on Aug. 20. The routine parts of the activities included thorough checkouts of all our backup systems (result: they work fine!) and of all our scientific instruments (they work fine too!).
Updates on Curiosity from Ken Herkenhoff: Embarking for Mount Sharp (sols 326-372)
Posted by Ken Herkenhoff on 2013/08/23 12:07 CDT | 1 comments
United States Geological Survey scientist Ken Herkenhoff posts regular updates on the Curiosity science team's plans for the rover on Mars.
Producing global views of Vesta from archival data
Posted by Björn Jónsson on 2013/08/21 12:18 CDT | 3 comments
Björn Jónsson produces beautiful color and 3D global mosaics of Vesta from Dawn's archival data.
Field Report From Mars: Sol 3397 - August 13, 2013
Posted by Larry Crumpler on 2013/08/18 11:06 CDT | 1 comments
Opportunity arrived at the base of the next segment of the Endeavour crater rim and is now investigating the contact.
Comet ISON lives on! (we think...)
Posted by Karl Battams on 2013/08/13 01:31 CDT | 1 comments
For several weeks now, ground-based observers have been blind to Comet ISON as our local star was sitting directly between us and the comet. I am delighted to share two pieces of good news: first, that ISON is still alive and well, and secondly that it has been recovered.
Interplanetary eyes on the lookout for comet ISON
Posted by Daniel Fischer on 2013/08/09 02:15 CDT
Space blogger Daniel Fischer provides a preview of the exciting interplanetary observing campaign that has recently begun to study comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) from vantage points across the solar system.
Beautiful science by Elektro-L
Posted by Vitaliy Egorov on 2013/08/08 03:54 CDT | 5 comments
Six months ago, I wrote about the Russian weather satellite Elektro-L, which has more than two years of successful experience in the geostationary orbit. Then I promised that I would be here to share the materials that we collected. I think it's time to deliver on the promise.
Mysterious tides in the Martian atmosphere
Posted by Armin Kleinboehl on 2013/08/07 03:49 CDT | 1 comments
Observations made by the Mars Climate Sounder, an instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, have revealed new information about atmospheric tides on the Red Planet.
Field Report From Mars: Sol 3385 - August 2, 2013
Posted by Larry Crumpler on 2013/08/06 06:54 CDT
This week Opportunity finished up a quick investigation of the strange rocky terrain out here in the plains where it is approaching the next mountain rim segment of Endeavour crater, Solander Point.
Jupiter and Io from Pioneer 10
Posted by Ted Stryk on 2013/08/02 04:25 CDT | 1 comments
This is a parting shot of Jupiter and Io, taken December 5, 1973, by the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, the first to see either world as a crescent.
Field Report From Mars: Sol 3378 - July 25, 2013
Posted by Larry Crumpler on 2013/07/26 12:32 CDT
We are now only about 180 meters from the new mountain, Solander Point. We slowed down this week so that we could check out the rocks here where there is a strange hydration signature from orbital remote sensing.
Should National Rivalries Still Drive U.S. Space Policy?
Posted by Lori Dajose on 2013/07/25 02:37 CDT | 5 comments
The House recently passed a NASA Authorization Bill that called for "American astronauts launching from American rockets on American soil". If we depend on international collaboration, should these policies still drive NASA policy?
Field Report From Mars: Sol 3363 - July 10, 2013
Posted by Larry Crumpler on 2013/07/18 01:41 CDT | 1 comments
Opportunity is only a couple of hundred meters out and closing fast on the next mountain. A short side trip east is in the works to check out an anomaly in the terrain.
Posted by Ralph Lorenz on 2013/07/17 01:13 CDT
The fictional world Tatooine, scene of action in the Star Wars movies, is named after a town in Tunisia, where parts of the movies were filmed. The desert backdrops against which the movies were filmed are real terrestrial landscapes, which prove to be perhaps unexpectedly dynamic.
Programmable Mars Watch for $50
Posted by Ara Kourchians on 2013/07/11 06:00 CDT
Time is kept differently on Mars. This is because Mars itself rotates a little slower than Earth. This proves to be a pain when it comes to timekeeping.
The Summer Solstice 2013 issue of The Planetary Report is out!
Posted by Donna Stevens on 2013/07/09 06:30 CDT | 4 comments
I’m happy to tell you that the Summer Solstice 2013 issue of The Planetary Report is hot off the presses and Is in the mail.
Field Report From Mars: Sol 3355 - July 2, 2013
Posted by Larry Crumpler on 2013/07/08 06:04 CDT
By Sol 3325 Opportunity has driven up onto the next "island" of rock, "Sutherland Point" and "Nobbys Head." On this sol Opportunity is only about 700 m from the goal, the mountains to the south.
How radar really works: The steps involved before getting an image
Posted by Alessondra Springmann on 2013/06/24 02:10 CDT | 3 comments
Arecibo Observatory is known for its 1000-foot diameter telescope and its appearances in Goldeneye and Contact. Aside from battling Bond villains and driving red diesel Jeeps around the telescope (grousing at the site director about the funding status of projects is optional), several hundred hours a year of telescope time at Arecibo go toward radar studies of asteroids.
Posted by Jim Bell on 2013/06/03 03:53 CDT | 6 comments
I'm absolutely floored when I stop to think that our beautiful blue ocean is only one of perhaps a half dozen or more oceans on other worlds in our solar system, and only one of probably millions (or more) oceans on other Earth-like planets in our galaxy. Oceans abound!
Posted by Larry Crumpler on 2013/05/24 11:27 CDT
Opportunity finally started driving south from its location on the outcrop where it had been since solar conjunction.
Posted by Alex Karl on 2013/05/23 01:52 CDT | 2 comments
Partnering with our friends from The Planetary Society, the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC), whose members hail from all over the globe, is bringing you an update on our activities and something you can join in on—at least if you are a student or young professional aged 18–35.
Report from the Starship Century Conference: Tuesday
Posted by Jon Lomberg on 2013/05/22 06:54 CDT | 5 comments
This week Jon Lomberg is attending the Starship Century conference, which brings together scientists, writers, and futurists to imagine the future of interstellar travel. Here he reports on presentations by Freeman Dyson, Peter Schwartz, Robert Zubrin, Geoff Landis, Neal Stephenson, and Patti Grace Smith.
Report from the Starship Century Conference: Monday
Posted by Jon Lomberg on 2013/05/21 10:42 CDT | 11 comments
This week Jon Lomberg is attending the Starship Century conference, which brings together scientists, writers, and futurists to imagine the future of interstellar travel. The organizers are Greg and Jim Benford, and among the attendees are: David Brin, Neal Stephenson, Vernor Vinge, Joe Haldeman, Alan Steele, Geoffrey Landis, Freeman Dyson, Jill Tarter, Paul Davies, Nalaka Gunawardene, and Daniel Richter.
New Horizons: Encounter Planning Accelerates
Posted by Alan Stern on 2013/05/17 10:18 CDT | 4 comments
Back in 2005 and 2006, when Pluto’s second and third moons (Nix and Hydra) were discovered, searches by astronomers for still more moons didn’t reveal any. So the accidental discovery of Pluto’s fourth moon by the Hubble Space Telescope in mid-2011 raised the possibility that the hazards in the Pluto system might be greater than previously anticipated.
Posted by Larry Crumpler on 2013/05/17 11:27 CDT
Opportunity has finally completed the detailed survey of the outcrops on the Cape York segment of the rim of the 22-km diameter Endeavour crater.
Connecting scientist mentors with students who have the desire to learn
Posted by Caleph Wilson on 2013/05/16 02:38 CDT | 9 comments
Caleph Wilson provides examples and guidance to scientists wishing to mentor students in science, technology, engineering, and math outreach programs.
Posted by Sarah Hörst on 2013/05/15 11:55 CDT | 12 comments
A tale from the scientific trenches: laboratory work to simulate Titan's rich atmosphere.
2011 HM₁₀₂: A new companion for Neptune
Posted by Alex Parker on 2013/04/30 04:20 CDT | 2 comments
This month my latest paper made it to print in the Astronomical Journal. It's a short piece that describes a serendipitous discovery that my collaborators and I made while searching for a distant Kuiper Belt Object for the New Horizons spacecraft to visit after its 2015 Pluto flyby.
Cutting NASA's Education and Public Outreach Efforts Now Is Short-sighted and Counterproductive
Posted by Lars Perkins on 2013/04/26 04:45 CDT | 4 comments
Lars Perkins, Chairman of NAC's Education Committee, writes a defense of NASA's Education and Outreach efforts, currently facing a major cut and restructuring in 2014.
Australia comes of age in the satellite world
Posted by Michele Bannister on 2013/04/15 04:56 CDT | 1 comments
On April 9, the current Australian government announced the first formal Australian space policy. Astronomy graduate student Michele Bannister explains what this means for the country.
Russia's Mars 3 lander maybe found by Russian amateurs
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/04/12 01:22 CDT | 4 comments
Виталий Егоров (Vitaliy Egorov) is a Russian space enthusiast who enlisted help of fellow enthusiasts to search for -- and maybe find -- the Russian Mars 3 hardware on the Martian surface. Here he explains how he did it.
April 12, 2013: Yuri’s Night Rocks the Planet!!!
Posted by Danielle Hannah on 2013/04/04 03:15 CDT | 2 comments
On April 12, 2013, the world’s biggest space party will take place across the globe. So far there are 190 parties in 32 countries on 6 continents registered and counting!!
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.
Sols 3237-3262 - March 4-29, 2013
Posted by Larry Crumpler on 2013/03/29 11:27 CDT
Flash memory or computer problems oddly occurred on both Curiosity and Opportunity around Feb 27. One possibility is that a large solar flare resulted in radiation at Mars sufficient to temporarily corrupt the memory on both rovers.
The March Equinox 2013 issue of The Planetary Report is out!
Posted by Donna Stevens on 2013/03/15 07:18 CDT | 2 comments
I’m happy to tell you that the March Equinox 2013 issue of The Planetary Report is hot off the presses and will begin mailing next week.
Comet PANSTARRS from the other side of the Sun!
Posted by Karl Battams on 2013/03/14 05:21 CDT | 8 comments
Comet PANSTARRS is delighting northern hemisphere viewers right now. But it's also big, bright, and beautiful to the STEREO spacecraft.
Posted by Mike Brown on 2013/03/06 10:41 CST | 3 comments
Ever wonder what it would taste like if you could lick the icy surface of Jupiter’s Europa? The answer may be that it would taste a lot like that last mouthful of water that you accidentally drank when you were swimming at the beach on your last vacation.
Posted by Larry Crumpler on 2013/03/01 10:27 CST
Opportunity completed the observations of the outcrop noted in the previous report and has now moved back down slope.
Posted by Ted Stryk on 2013/02/28 12:59 CST | 1 comments
Presenting a newly-processed version of Voyager 2's best images of Uranus' moon Umbriel.
Posted by Edward Gomez on 2013/02/18 05:14 CST | 4 comments
Mostly the Universe stays unchanged for hundreds, thousands or even millions of years. There are some cases however when some things change really rapidly. Recently I observed one of these rapidly changing, transient phenomena, as asteroid called 2012 DA14. I work for Las Cumbres Observatory and we have been trying to observe this asteroid since 5 February.
What We Know About the Russian Meteor Event [UPDATED]
We have the technology to provide warning about these potential disasters
Posted by Heidi Hammel on 2013/02/15 02:26 CST | 22 comments
Preliminary estimates show that the meteoroid was 15 meters wide and weighed roughly 8000 tons. The resulting airburst would have the equivalent yield of about a 1/2 megaton explosion.
An evening that brought me very close to Curiosity
Posted by Damia Bouic on 2013/02/15 09:00 CST | 3 comments
Damien Bouic received some well-deserved recognition from the Chemcam team for his great Curiosity image processing work.
Sol 3215-3219 - February 6-13, 2013
Posted by Larry Crumpler on 2013/02/13 10:27 CST
We have been seeing lots of small light-colored veins crossing through the outcrops here on Matijevic Hill, and we have tried to get a handle on the composition of these veins by doing multiple offsets with the APXS. It appears that the small veins are calcium sulfate, as best we can determine.
Saturn's Hexagon Viewed from the Ground
Posted by Leigh Fletcher on 2013/02/01 05:49 CST | 2 comments
For the first time, amateur astronomers are capturing spectacular images of Saturn's bizarre north polar hexagon.
Posted by Ganna (Anya) Portyankina on 2013/01/23 11:51 CST | 2 comments
The Mars I study is really active; the surface constantly changes. We have collected a lot of image data about changing seasonal features near the south pole. There is so much that we can't analyze all of it on our own. We need your help, through a new Zooniverse project named PlanetFour.
Voyager 1 revisited: Io and Europa transiting Jupiter
Posted by Björn Jónsson on 2013/01/22 06:04 CST
What is the highest resolution global Jupiter mosaic that includes a satellite transit that can be assembled from Voyager images? Satellite transits are especially beautiful when the resolution is high enough for some details to be visible on the satellites so I decided to check this. And I was remarkably lucky.
The Planetary Report, volume 32, number 4: The Year in Pictures
Posted by Donna Stevens on 2013/01/18 05:03 CST
For those of you Planetary Society members who like your copy of The Planetary Report served up in pixels, the December Solstice 2012 issue is ready and waiting for you.
Posted by Martin Still on 2013/01/07 12:35 CST | 1 comments
A change in the Kepler data delivery process provides both scientists and the public to get involved in planet discovery.
Who is the photographer behind Mars rover photos? Answer from Jim Bell
Posted by Jim Bell on 2013/01/02 11:40 CST | 1 comments
Another Mars imaging scientist answers the question: who is the "photographer" behind images returned from Mars?
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