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Your 2012 Year in Space Calendar
  

The Planetary Report

The Planetary Report is the internationally recognized magazine of The Planetary Society, featuring lively articles and full-color photos to provide comprehensive coverage of discoveries on Earth and other planets.

This quarterly magazine reaches members of The Planetary Society all over the world, with news about planetary missions, spacefaring nations, intrepid explorers, planetary science controversies and the latest findings in humankind's exploration of the solar system.

The Planetary Report is an exclusive benefit for Planetary Society members. If you're not already a member, please join today!

This Month in the Planetary Report

The cover of Volume XXXI, Number 2
On the Cover: Lava lakes are beautiful, fascinating, and formidable expressions of active volcanism. They, and the volcanoes they top, are portals to Earth's hot, roiling depths. Nyiragongo volcano, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is one of less than a handful of volcanoes on Earth with an active, long-lived lava lake. In January 2006, Tom Pfeiffer took this photo from only 600 meters above Nyiragongo's lava lake.
Photo: Tom Pfeiffer, volcanodiscovery.com

From the Editor

This spring, we on Earth are celebrating two 50-year anniversaries in space exploration. In April 1961, Yuri Gagarin's flight made him the first human in space; in May, John F. Kennedy's speech set the United States on its path to the Moon.

Around our planet, people are celebrating both milestones, but the partying is tinged with a bit of sadness and disappointment. If you're like I am, you once confidently believed that Gagarin's flight and Armstrong and Aldrin's steps onto the Moon were only the beginning of humanity's breakout into space. Since the Apollo program ended, however, human explorers have been restricted to low Earth orbit, flying little higher than Gagarin did 50 years ago.

Look how far we haven't come.

This spring, as I watch the budget process in Washington, D.C. and see space exploration reduced to a political football game, it's hard to feel like celebrating. Honest politicians admit it: the space program has become a jobs program. Senators are designing rockets, based on how many jobs the parts will provide in their states.

When you read about lava lakes that are known in only two places in our solar system—on Earth and on Io—can you help but ask if our spacecraft will ever return to the outer solar system? If the current political situation in the United States holds, the answer must be "Not in our lifetimes."

Can you and I do anything to put humanity back on course to space? I believe we can, if we work together and apply pressure where it's most effective: directly on the politicians who control space agencies' budgets. Tell them what you want to see in space. Help your Planetary Society amplify the voices of thousands like you to demand that the journey begun by Gagarin and Kennedy must not end.

-Charlene M. Anderson

FEATURES

Your Place In Space: Oh, To Be Young and Spacefaring
by Bill Nye

Snapshots from Space: Comet Crash
by Emily Stewart Lakdawalla

Once, We Went to the Moon
by John M. Logsdon

Lava Lakes on Earth and Io
by Ashley Gerard Davies

We Make It Happen! FINDS: One Step Closer to Faraway Earths
by Amir Alexander

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