Articles

Ryan Anderson

This morning we hit the ground running and heard about a very interesting site: the Nili Fossae Trough. This site would land in a big canyon formed when a block of crust dropped down.

Ryan Anderson

It's almost time! Tomorrow the third Mars Science Laboratory Landing Site Workshop begins!

Ryan Anderson

One year from today, the Mars Science Laboratory will launch. It seems fitting that the workshop during which we choose the final three possible landing sites begins today.

Ryan Anderson

I'm in the airport on my way to California to participate in the third Mars Science Laboratory Landing Site Workshop, so I thought I would take this chance to post my blog entry from day three of last year's workshop.

Ryan Anderson

Today was a marathon of landing site presentations, ranging all over the martian globe, and targeting just about every potentially water-related feature on Mars.

Ryan Anderson

Coming up next week is the 3rd Mars Science Laboratory Landing Site Workshop, where the Mars science community will come together to narrow down the possible landing site choices for MSL.

Emily Lakdawalla

Don Davis is a space artist who takes the question of color in space very seriously.

Emily Lakdawalla

Here's another wonderful self-portrait silhouette by Opportunity.

Emily Lakdawalla

A press release from the Cassini VIMS team today is titled

Emily Lakdawalla

I was delighted to receive an email from Morten Bo Madsen, who I knew from the Mars Exploration Rover mission as

Emily Lakdawalla

The trans-Neptunian object formerly known as 2005 FY9 now has a name:

Emily Lakdawalla

I have posted several times about the amazing photo captured by HiRISE of Phoenix under its parachute as it descended. There have been two common questions I've received about the photo: was there any color data taken, and what more can I tell you about how hard it was to take the photo? I've got answers to both questions for you today.

Emily Lakdawalla

Eduardo Tesheiner was kind enough to send me an updated version of his route map for Opportunity so we can get a sense of just how close the rover is getting to Cape Verde.

Emily Lakdawalla

One of my favorite amateur image magicians, Gordan Ugarkovic continues to play around with the amazing data recently released by the Cassini mission, covering the Iapetus encounter of last September. Here's a lovely mosaic he just put together of the Voyager Mountains.

Emily Lakdawalla

As MESSENGER flew past the night side of Mercury in January, its Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS) scooped up ions from an atmosphere so tenuous that it's usually called an

Bruce Betts

Amateur astronomers play a critical role in retiring the risk of impact from near-Earth objects. When the Shoemaker NEO Grant program began in 1997, the focus was on finding previously undiscovered objects one kilometer in diameter and larger. Thanks to professional NEO survey programs like LINEAR (the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program run by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories) and the Catalina Sky Survey (run from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory), the goal of discovering the vast majority of large NEOs is within reach, and the focus of the Shoemaker NEO Grant Program has shifted to astrometric follow-up and physical studies.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Phoenix mission confirmed it this morning: the disappearing act pulled by those chunks of bright material in the Dodo trench pretty much nails the identification of the bright material as ice, which is great news for the mission. Ice is what Phoenix went all the way to Mars to study; it's what the team has been aiming for all these years.

Jim Bell

One of the ways that planetary scientists try to understand the origin and evolution of landforms on other planets is by studying similar kinds of landforms or

Emily Lakdawalla

JAXA has posted a note on their website on the status of Hayabusa, which apparently reached aphelion in late May. Hayabusa is Japan's amazing ion-powered mission to asteroid Itokawa, which touched down on Itokawa to grab a sample in mid-November 2005, but suffered an injury that has left in doubt its ability to return the sample capsule to Earth.

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily hits the high points of today's press conference.