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Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
What's your favorite planet?
Before you answer, check out these images!
Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Spirit Parks for Winter, Opportunity Tastes Chocolate Hills
As winter put the freeze on in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, the Mars Exploration Rovers slowed down a bit, but continued throughout February to demonstrate the mettle that made them famous: Spirit successfully drove backwards, parked in place for the season, then continued working, as Opportunity roved through rock debris on a cruise around the rim of Concepcin Crater.
Dawn Journal: Forever Farther From Earth Than the Sun
Pushing ever farther into space, deeper into the asteroid belt, Dawn is continuing to progress smoothly on its solar system journey.
Cassini at Enceladus: Baghdad's Glowing Canyon
The Cassini mission released a pile of images today from the super-close flyby of Enceladus that happened on November 21.
Pretty picture: Mini-RF exposes lunar geology
There are all kinds of neat things to see in this recently released image from the Mini-RF synthetic aperture radar instrument aboard Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Hello, snowman! (Cassini observes Iapetus)
I visited the Cassini raw images site today and was pleased to see another couple of sets of images have been captured on Iapetus.
Lovely album of photos from WISE
Today the Wide-field Survey Explorer (WISE) team released a small album of beautiful astrophotos.
Cassini tour page updated for the Solstice Mission
My enormously long page describing the details of Cassini's tour -- each and every Cassini orbit of Saturn -- is now updated to include the entire Solstice Mission, which doubles its length.
Cassini eyes the eyeball
On Saturday, Cassini flew within 9,500 kilometers of Mimas, the innermost of the medium-sized icy moons of Saturn.
Revolutionary NASA Solar Explorer Roars to Space
Planetary Society volunteer Ken Kremer reports for us from the Kennedy Space Center, where he is covering the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour, set to launch this weekend.
Calypso coolness
Cassini got pretty close to Calypso yesterday, on the way in to Mimas. Calypso is one of the smaller moonlets of Saturn.
Twenty years since Voyager's last view
On Sunday comes the twentieth anniversary of an iconic image from the Voyager mission: the
Hubble sees both of Saturn's aurorae
Yesterday, the European wing of the Hubble PR machine released this cool image of Saturn and its aurorae, with an associated video.
Find pics and track the rovers in Google Mars
I think a goodly proportion of you readers have already figured this out for yourselves since it was launched last March, but I didn't download and install it until last weekend, so this is new to me: Google Mars is awesome.
Dawn Journal: Thruster Two's Time to Shine
Dawn is outfitted with three ion thrusters, assigned the heartwarming names thruster #1, thruster #2, and thruster #3.
A Space Carnival (#140) and some new names for Enceladus
This week the Carnival of Space is over at one of my favorite new blogs, Lights in the Dark. Actually it's not so new -- evidently this week marks its first anniversary!
Pretty picture: Opportunity around Concepcion
Here's a neat picture from Opportunity, a panorama composed of its wide-angle, mast-mounted Navcam cameras, showing the crater Concepcion.
WISE has found its first comet, P/2010 B2 (WISE)
Having discovered its first asteroid on January 12, Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has now officially discovered its first comet, P/2010 B2 (WISE).
Manic Monday: Chocolate Hills, Io, and NASA's budget
Although I am not suffering under the
That's a lot of motion for a "stuck" rover!
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory posted a video to YouTube today showing what seems to be a remarkable amount of motion out of Spirit lately, especially given that she's supposed to be a