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Orion service module, Ariane development highlight new ESA budget

Posted by Jason Davis on 2012/11/26 06:00 CST | 1 comments

Representatives from the ESA approved a 10 billion euro budget for 2013-2017 during their Ministerial Council last week in Naples, Italy.

Visiting Viking at Seattle's Museum of Flight

Posted by Tom Dahl on 2012/11/14 03:03 CST

One of the nicest aerospace museums in the United States is the Museum of Flight, outside Seattle, Washington. I traveled cross-country in order to visit the "Flight Capsule 3" Viking lander, a backup unit that was never completed. Its partially built state exposes its internal structures, making it a boon to study.

Pretty picture: Landsat view of southern Greenland

Posted by Björn Jónsson on 2012/11/13 05:24 CST

This is a very large (19000 pixels square) mosaic of the fjords and glaciers of southern Greenland. I had been interested for a long time in experimenting with the processing of Earth satellite imagery just to get a comparison to the other planets.

Dawn journal: scary-good ion propulsion

Posted by Marc Rayman on 2012/10/31 12:34 CDT

Dawn continues to raise its orbit en route to its 2015 date with Ceres. Also, Marc prepares his high-energy Halloween costume.

A dispatch from J-school: two short videos

Posted by Jason Davis on 2012/10/23 11:05 CDT

Two short videos produced by Jason Davis on astronomy and planetary science work taking place at the University of Arizona.

Astrophotos making the web - the good, the bad and the ugly ...

Posted by Daniel Fischer on 2012/10/10 04:18 CDT | 2 comments

Space blogger Daniel Fischer writes about the problem of composited astrophotos being distributed through social media channels by people unaware that they are artworks, not documentary photographs.

Citizen "Ice Hunters" help find a Neptune Trojan target for New Horizons

Posted by Alex Parker on 2012/10/09 12:15 CDT | 1 comments

2011 HM102 is an L5 Neptune Trojan, trailing Neptune by approximately 60 degrees. This object was discovered in the search for a New Horizons post-Pluto encounter object in the Kuiper Belt.

SpaceX's first paid cargo run off to bumpy start

Posted by Jason Davis on 2012/10/08 11:03 CDT | 7 comments

SpaceX successfully sent their first paid Dragon capsule towards the International Space Station Sunday night. But the bigger story happened on the way to orbit.

Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Finds Thrill of Newberries on Matijevic Hill

Posted by A.J.S. Rayl on 2012/10/03 01:58 CDT | 1 comments

On reconnaissance of Matijevic Hill, Opportunity has driven right into another Martian mystery, compete with new kinds of “berries," tiny white veins running through two distinctive outcrops of rock, and orbital data indicating that somewhere here clay minerals are hiding, all of which has put the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission back in the science spotlight and made for another September to remember at Meridiani Planum.

Sturzstroms on Saturn’s Moon Iapetus

Posted by Kelsi Singer on 2012/10/01 04:31 CDT

Long-runout landslides (sturzstroms) are found across the Solar System. They have been observed primarily on Earth and Mars, but also on Venus, and Jupiter’s moons Io and Callisto. I have just published a paper about sturzstroms on Iapetus.