Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

On July 10, 2010, at 15:44:56 UTC, the Rosetta spacecraft will fly within 3,162 kilometers of the largest asteroid yet visited by a spacecraft.

Emily Lakdawalla

Upon James Aldridge's return from Japan, he posted several albums worth of amazing photos, including several of their calligraphy instructor, well-known artist Aiko Tanaka, creating a gestural brush painting to commemorate Hayabusa's return.

Emily Lakdawalla

As promised last week, Cassini has delivered its best photos yet of the tiny moon Daphnis, the ringmoon that is responsible for carving out the skinny Keeler gap at the outer edge of Saturn's A ring.

Emily Lakdawalla

A very brief item posted on the Hayabusa website included two pictures of the interior of its sample return capsule, one of which shows a particle.

Louis D. Friedman

The IKAROS spacecraft continues to perform its mission well as its team at the Japan Space Exploration Center moves closer to the first fully controlled solar sail flight.

Marc Rayman

A new version of the Dawn spacecraft is continuing the ambitious journey through the asteroid belt to uncharted distant worlds.

A.J.S. Rayl

With winter still freezing the southern hemisphere of Mars, June might have been an uneventful month for your average working robot, but not the Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs). In fact, from the sounds of silence to a major discovery to an injury scare, the rovers' latest trials, tribulations and achievements, have turned the last four weeks into something of an emotional roller-coaster for some members of the MER team.

Emily Lakdawalla

It turns out that Saturn's not the only place that displays geometrical shapes in its atmosphere. Earth does too.

Emily Lakdawalla

There's a name for that funny hummocky texture to the lunar landscape:

Emily Lakdawalla

Or: Emily reads you the table of contents of Icarus.

Emily Lakdawalla

In February, the Chandrayaan-1 science team had a meeting in Ahmedabad, India, to share their results with each other.

Emily Lakdawalla

Just a pretty picture post, a dramatic Cassini shot on the outer edge of the A ring captured earlier this month.

A.J.S. Rayl

Mars Exploration Rover Spirit continued to hibernate this month, parked in place near an old volcanic formation called Home Plate. At the same time though she managed to rove back into the planetary exploration spotlight when a group of the mission scientists announced they had found -- in data from an outcrop the rover visited more than four years ago -- evidence for a past watery environment more suitable for life than any other either Spirit or Opportunity have found, a place where near-pure water existed. 1

Emily Lakdawalla

We've already seen IKAROS' view of its deployed sails from cameras attached to the spacecraft, but, in a brilliant idea, the Japanese built IKAROS with two deployable cameras that could view the thing from a distance.

Emily Lakdawalla

Speaking of spacecraft crashing...

Emily Lakdawalla

Covering the events of Hayabusa's return involved a lot of watching and waiting. Rather than go blind staring at my computer and cause carpal tunnel syndrome by excessively clicking the refresh button, I decided to...go blind and develop carpal tunnel syndrome by doing some crocheting.

Emily Lakdawalla

Here are a few photos from a Flickr gallery from the Australian Science Media Centre documenting the Hayabusa sample capsule's first step in its journey from Australia to Sagamihara, Japan, where it will arrive on Friday.

Emily Lakdawalla

The major news on the Hayabusa mission this morning is that JAXA has retrieved the sample capsule!

Emily Lakdawalla

Oh my wonderful little flying saucer, you have been to an asteroid and back -- and you were burning like a star last night! And there you are, sitting quietly in the desert, just waiting to be retrieved...

Emily Lakdawalla

Hayabusa's return: round up some of the amazing photos, movies, and artworks that were posted and shared and Tweeted and re-Tweeted over the previous dozen hours or so.