Articles

Deepak Dhingra

Deepak Dhingra reports on presentations from this year's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference focusing on how impacts on the Moon have affected Earth.

Emily Lakdawalla

A Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE image taken on February 10 shows Curiosity having just made deep, dark tracks across the Dingo Gap dune.

Emily Lakdawalla

On the heels of last weeks reports of a second Sedna and a ringed Centaur comes a third cool outer solar system discovery: A new, likely large member of the Kuiper belt. With an absolute magnitude of about 3.0, the new object currently known as 2013 FY27 is the tenth brightest object beyond Neptune .

Van Kane

In December, scientists announced the discovery of possible plumes of water being ejected from Jupiters’s moon Europa. If confirmed, Europa would be the second moon with confirmed plumes after Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Two Discovery mission proposals for Enceladus suggest the types of missions that may be proposed for Europa.

Constantine Tsang

She’s alive! She’s alive! Or is she? A little more than a week ago, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2014, evidence was presented that Venus was geologically active, not in the recent past, like 100,000 years ago, but right now.

Marc Rayman

Marc Rayman updates us on Dawn's status and explains how the spacecraft is actually getting closer to Earth at the moment as it moves deeper into the asteroid belt.

Emily Lakdawalla

Report from a varied session on Titan's lakes at this year's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

ESA Mars Express Team

Hubble has taken some great new images of our 'friend,' Comet Siding Spring, due to pass by Mars at less than 136,000 km on October 19 – less than half the distance between Earth and our moon.

Louis D. Friedman

A panel of three former astronauts will discuss the future of human spaceflight at a public event at the California Institute of Technology's Beckman Auditorium, Tuesday, April 8th, 2014 at 8 pm.

Achim Vollhardt

ICE has been on a journey for over 30 years around our sun. While the owner has decided not to bring the ship back to its home port, a group of radio amateurs tries to find out how ICE is doing.

Emily Lakdawalla

Some arm faults caused delays on Curiosity's approach to Kimberley, but the rover is now parked at its north edge, examining the

Bruce Betts

Warren Ashley, pioneer of distance learning at CSUDH, passed away March 21, 2014. His idea led to the partnership between CSUDH and The Planetary Society to produce an online Introductory Astronomy course.

Casey Dreier

An animated NASA Administrator defended the commercial crew program as the fastest way to return to American access to low-Earth orbit in a hearing before the House Space Subcommittee today.

Emily Lakdawalla

Rosetta has turned on its cameras and sighted its comet for the first time since waking from hibernation. Next activity: waking the Philae lander.

Emily Lakdawalla

On Wednesday, March 26, two important discoveries in the outer solar system were announced: the discovery of the second confirmed member of the Inner Oort Cloud (2012 VP113) and the discovery of rings around the planetesimal Chariklo. In a Hangout on Air, a rag-tag group of planetary scientists and astronomers active on Twitter talked about the discoveries.

Alex Parker

Yesterday, a team of astronomers announced that they discovered a set of planet-like rings around Chariklo, an asteroid-like body that currently resides in the unstable region between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus.

Casey Dreier

Now that the White House has released its 2015 NASA budget proposal, what happens next? What can you do to help?

Emily Lakdawalla

2012 VP113 is a new world that has been discovered on a Sedna-like orbit. What does that mean? It could imply the existence of a planet X, but doesn't prove it. It does suggest that a lot more Sednas are waiting to be discovered.

Emily Lakdawalla

Vignettes from dozens of LPSC talks: GRAIL and LADEE at the Moon; ice and craters and conglomerates and organics and gullies on Mars; polar deposits and volatile elements on Mercury; tectonics on Enceladus; and more, until my brain was so full I could barely speak.

Katherine Mack

Katie Mack explains why the BICEP2 detection of primordial gravitational waves has left astrophysicists at a loss for words.