Articles

A.J.S. Rayl

It's been a relatively quiet but scientifically significant month on the Red Planet for the Mars Exploration Rovers. While Opportunity continued its long journey to Endeavour Crater, forced to take it slower and make longer stops to rest its 'hot' front wheel, Spirit, seemingly just biding its time embedded in a sand pit it slipped into in April, turned up one of the most intriguing discoveries on the mission to date.

Timothy Reed

Timothy Reed explains how optical telescopes are tested for gravity sag, and the methods used to counteract or compensate for it.

John Spencer

Taking a look at Jupiter's moon, Io, from Hawaii.

John Smith

Each Titan flyby is not a fork in the road, but rather a Los Angeles style cloverleaf in terms of the dizzying number of possible destinations. So how did our current and future plans for the path of the Cassini spacecraft come to be? That's the question Dave Seal put to me since that's my job -- I am a tour designer.

David Seal

Saturn is rapidly approaching equinox, where the Sun passes through the ring plane (south-to-north, i.e. the northern vernal equinox), and its ring system (i.e. its great now-gloomy poorly-lit circles of large blocks of water ice) is starting to show some really interesting behavior.

David Seal

David Seal explains the complications for Cassini coming from Titan's atmosphere and Solar Cycle.

David Seal

David Seal muses on his time as the mission planner for Cassini, and the history behind its name, and astronomy in Rome.

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rovers hit some rough patches in May as Spirit sat stuck in a sand patch all month and Opportunity had to stop again to rest its right front wheel but with a little help from Mars, the intrepid, twin robot field geologists cruised through the summer solstice with the energy and invincibility of a couple of teenage robots.

Ken Edgett

Looking at Mars with the MRO CTX

Ken Edgett

Water and the Curiosity Landing Site Candidates

Ryan Anderson

Well, it looks like the next-generation rover that will be launching to Mars in 2011 (and happens to be the focal point of my PhD thesis) just got a name!

Marc Rayman

Dawn's mission continues to go very well, as the spacecraft nears the end of the longest coasting period of its astronomical journey.

Ken Edgett

Sometimes it is a bit awkward being a planetary scientist.

Ken Kremer

Space Shuttle Atlantis and her crew of 7 astronauts glided in to a smooth and triumphant touchdown today, Sunday, May 24.

Ken Kremer

Farewell to Hubble, Obama Calls, Astronauts Testify to Congress as Shuttle is Set to Land

Alan Stern

Despite still being more than six years and just over 18 Astronomical Units from the Pluto system, the project team for New Horizons is conducting the second and final portion of our Pluto Encounter Preliminary Design Review (EPDR) tomorrow and the next day.

Alan Stern

Today, I'm kicking the week off with a look at the unusually intense confluence of far flung planetary exploration that's just around the corner, starting the middle of next year.

Mark Adler

The Spirit rover on Mars is currently stuck in a patch of loose material. After a few attempts to get free, the team has wisely decided to do further experiments on Earth instead of on Mars.

Mark Adler

On Monday, if all goes well, we will launch the Space Shuttle to rejuvenate one the greatest scientific missions launched on or off the Earth: the Hubble Space Telescope.

Jim Bell

Jim Bell describes his proposal to join the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Cameras science team.