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Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
LightSail Launch Event
LightSail 2’s launch window opens on June 22, and we are finalizing plans for our launch viewing celebrations. Once we have finished coordinating the details with the Air Force’s STP-2 mission team and the Kennedy Space Center, we will share them with all of our members and backers so that you can join us in person or remotely via the internet.
A Crash Program or Modest Proposal?
The White House released a long-awaited supplemental budget request for NASA today. It proposes an additional $1.6 billion for an accelerated human spaceflight effort to land on the Moon in 2024. This boosts the President's budget request for NASA to $22.6 billion in fiscal year 2020, which is approximately $1.1 billion or 5% more than the amount provided by Congress last year.
What Can We Learn from a Failed Return to the Moon?
Thirty years ago, President George H.W. Bush announced an ambitious program to return humans to the Moon. It failed. Today the Trump Administration wants the same thing. Can a failed lunar return effort help this one succeed?
Hearing Recap: NASA’s FY 2020 Budget Request
On March 27, 2019, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies held a hearing titled, “NASA’s FY 2020 Budget Request.”
T-minus Five Years and Counting
Can NASA really return astronauts to the Moon by 2024?
NASA’s Lucy mission gets caught in a fight between rocket companies
SpaceX says it wants to save NASA money, but its actions could cost taxpayers more in the end.
The Making of Life
Michael L. Wong asks how our understanding of the origin of life on Earth informs our search for it elsewhere.
Flying By Home
Vicky Hamilton explores how OSIRIS-REx used its Earth flyby to test instruments on the way to asteroid Bennu.
This Thanksgiving, avoid the politics and talk space instead
If you're expecting to gather with extended family on Thanksgiving, avoid the politics. Here are some conversation starters to use at the dinner table that everyone can engage in.
NASA's Orion spacecraft makes progress, but are the agency's lunar plans on track?
Orion's service module arrived in Florida, but some space industry experts question whether NASA's human spaceflight plans are realistic.
Space station crew safe after failed launch
About two minutes after liftoff, the Soyuz vehicle carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin to orbit failed.
NASA Then & Now
A collection of before and after slider images showing how views of planets in our solar system have changed over the years since NASA was created.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is getting a signal boost
It's all thanks to renewed interest from NASA and a private effort to scan the skies using an array of 64 radio telescopes.
Asteroids have been hitting the Earth for billions of years. In 2022, we hit back.
DART is a test of the kinetic impactor technique, a potential method to deflect an asteroid on course to impact the Earth.
The day I caught rocket fever
On February 6, 2018, I found myself shoulder to shoulder with two of my heroes: Bill Nye on the left, Buzz Aldrin on the right. Our eyes were fixed on the first vertical Falcon Heavy rocket. Figuring the world's most powerful rocket might send me flying backwards once the countdown hit zero, I gripped the railing so tightly I started to lose the feeling in my fingertips.
Goodbye, Delta II rocket
This Saturday, the final Delta II rocket will launch NASA's ICESat-2 spacecraft into orbit.
Orion's third flight will haul two pieces of a space station to lunar orbit
NASA is planning for a 30-day mission to lunar orbit in 2024.
How India built NavIC, the country's own GPS network
The country's satellite navigation system faced a long and difficult road, but it's finally operational.
NEA Scout unfurls solar sail for full-scale test
The next time its solar sail is deployed, NEA Scout will be out near the Moon.
Let's check in on The Planetary Society's asteroid hunters
The Shoemaker NEO Grant program funds advanced amateur astronomers who help determine if nearby asteroids will hit Earth. Here are some collected reports from our asteroid hunters.