Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

2010 AL30 zipped past us harmlessly about five hours ago. Because of its one-year orbital period, many people speculated it might be a manmade object, but 2010 AL30 might, in fact, be artificial.

Emily Lakdawalla

The January 1, 2010 Cassini imaging data release includes everything acquired by Cassini from January 1 to March 30, 2009 in all its high-quality glory.

Emily Lakdawalla

Radio scientist Lance Benner posted to the Minor Planets Mailing list this evening the following message:

Emily Lakdawalla

It's been the second most popular question I get from readers:

Emily Lakdawalla

Last week in Science magazine appeared the first peer-reviewed article on the results of Rosetta's September 2008 encounter with the smallish main-belt asteroid Steins. This morning I got a chance to sit down and read the article, and I wrote up a summary.

Emily Lakdawalla

This description of asteroid 2867 Steins is based upon an article published in the January 8, 2010 issue of Science by H. Uwe Keller and numerous coauthors and on a related press release.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's been two months, now, that extrication efforts have been going on. It's discouraging that the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit isn't out of the trap.

Emily Lakdawalla

It was 400 years ago today that Galileo discovered smaller planets attending the planet Jupiter.

Emily Lakdawalla

Congratulations are due to the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) team on their lovely

Emily Lakdawalla

The United States Geological Survey has just released a new atlas of Mercury, the first to be based upon the three flybys worth of image data gathered by the MESSENGER mission.

Marc Rayman

Dawn usually interrupts ion thrusting once a week for about eight hours to point its main antenna to Earth. On November 30, however, instead of resuming thrusting, it dutifully followed different instructions that were stored onboard.

Bruce Betts

Congratulations to NASA's Kepler mission team on their announcement of the discovery of its first five exoplanets (planets around other stars).

Emily Lakdawalla

I know I already posted Earth once before. But I could not resist winding up the calendar with this view of a new Earth, for the new year.

Emily Lakdawalla

Did you think I was going to skip Uranus? How could I?

Emily Lakdawalla

I just got a press release from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that made my heart sink; the extrication effort for Spirit is not going at all well. I did not want to keep sounding a knell of bad news. But once in a while, I do have to report bad news.

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rovers quietly wrapped up 2009 this month: Spirit continued to valiantly spin its wheels in an attempt to get out of its embedded location on the west side of Home Plate in Gusev Crater; and Opportunity continued its investigation of Marquette Island, perhaps the oldest Martian rock it's found to date at Meridiani Planum.

Bruce Betts

NASA has selected three finalists for the next New Frontiers mission: a Venus lander, a near Earth asteroid sample return, and a lunar Aitken basin sample return mission.

Emily Lakdawalla

Looking over the list of planets, moons, and smaller bodies I posted so far, I realized I didn't have an image of a comet yet.

Emily Lakdawalla

Rhea? You might be asking. Rhea? When Saturn has so many more interesting moons? Hear me out.

Emily Lakdawalla

Here's yet another of the moons of Uranus for you: Ariel, a near-twin in diameter to Umbriel, but apparently with more interesting geology.