Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Last Friday I posted an image containing 18 samples of terrain, all shown at the same scale. Were you able to figure out which square was which? Here are the answers.

Casey Dreier

NASA announced the first-round selections for its next Discovery mission today. A total of five planetary mission concepts -- three targeted at asteroids, two at Venus -- will move to the next stage of the competition.

Casey Dreier

Learn all about a sustainable, affordable path to get humans to the Red Planet—a path that goes through Mars orbit and Phobos.

Emily Lakdawalla

NASA held a press briefing today to publicize a cool incremental result in the story of present-day liquid water on Mars. How big a deal is this story? Was all the pre-announcement hype justified? Is this just NASA discovering water on Mars for the zillionth time? What does this mean for things many space fans care about: life on Mars or future human exploration?

Marc Rayman

On the 8th anniversary of the launch of the Dawn spacecraft, Chief Engineer and Mission Director Marc Rayman gives his annual summary of Dawn’s progress on its interplanetary travels.

Emily Lakdawalla

A look at the surfaces of 18 worlds in our solar system, all at the same scale.

Jason Davis

LightSail's burn wire, the mission-critical component responsible for releasing the spacecraft's solar panels, will get a backup ahead of next year's solar sailing mission.

Emily Lakdawalla

Enlarge this image to its full 8000-pixel-square glory and lose yourself in it.

Leigh Fletcher

Trying to keep track of the ever-changing face of Jupiter is a pretty big challenge—its a dynamic world that can fascinate and surprise every time we turn our telescopes towards it.

Dante Lauretta

Historically, NASA missions set aside a portion of their budgets for education and public outreach, or EPO. However, the OSIRIS-REx EPO budget got deleted in 2013 as part of a broader federal policy change. Dante Lauretta decided to make a run at a private company to recover the lost OSIRIS-REx EPO program – and Xtronaut was born!

Emily Lakdawalla

There are no spacecraft at Uranus or Neptune, and there haven't been for 30 and 25 years, respectively. So we depend on Earth-based astronomers to monitor them, including Damian Peach.

Jason Davis

For less than $50, you can download images from NOAA satellites using your laptop and a small radio antenna.

Emily Lakdawalla

Since I last checked in with Curiosity, the rover has been steadily driving southward, heading directly toward the Bagnold dune field. They are looking for a place to drill into the Stimson sandstone unit, but have been distracted by intriguing pale haloes around frock fractures. Despite a rough road, the wheels are not showing significant increase in damage.

Emily Lakdawalla

Today, New Horizons released a stunning new image of Pluto's backlit mountains and hazes. I explain how the image was taken with its Ralph Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera.

Van Kane

Three recently proposed low-cost space missions all aim to answer the same question: Where did Earth's abundant water come from?

Jason Davis

Spaceflight company Blue Origin plans to launch its orbital rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the company revealed Tuesday.

Jason Davis

NASA's Orion spacecraft has officially moved from preliminary design to fabrication, but the agency says the first crewed flight of the vehicle could slip two years, from 2021 to 2023.

Emily Lakdawalla

Last Friday the Internet received its first post-encounter pile of goodies from the New Horizons flyby of the Pluto system.

Phil Stooke

Planetary scientist Phil Stooke may have found the retro-rockets from NASA's Lunar Surveyor missions, sent to the Moon in preparation for Apollo.

Jason Davis

Two sun-observing spacecraft in Earth orbit captured images of a partial solar eclipse Sunday morning.