Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

In which I finally get around to writing about a paper published last August: Enceladus' plumes sometimes spout more and sometimes spout less, depending on where Enceladus is in its orbit. This discovery was enabled by Cassini's longevity at Saturn, and we'll be able to follow up on it, as long as Cassini is allowed to complete its mission.

Casey Dreier

The House Science Committee is considering giving a select few NASA programs special protected status against cancellation.

Casey Dreier

Ellen Stofan, NASA's Chief Scientist, and John Grunsfeld, the head of the Science Mission Directorate and a Hubble repair astronaut, highlighted recent NASA science discoveries at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.

Mat Kaplan

Karl Battams of NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign is our guest on this week's show. He explains how ISON really did become the comet of the century for scientists.

Casey Dreier

If you want to know why Cassini might be terminated early, or why NASA pulled out of its joint Mars mission with Europe, or why the new ASRG power source was put on indefinite hold, this chart has your answer.

Emily Lakdawalla

In a Martian first, the Curiosity science team has measured the age of a Martian rock, in two totally different ways. They presented the result at the 2013 meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Bill Dunford

Two grand canyons fill with fog, one on Earth and one on Mars.

Van Kane

ASRGs could have stretched NASA's limited supply of plutonium to potentially enable missions to the perpetually-shadowed polar craters on our moon, to flyby Uranus, or to float for months on a Titan lake.

Emily Lakdawalla

Next week is the annual Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), an enormous gathering of geoscientists of all varieties that occurs every year at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco. AGU is putting increasing effort into making it possible to attend some sessions virtually, and press briefings will be webstreamed, too.

Marc Rayman

Gliding smoothly through the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Dawn continues to make good progress on its ambitious mission of exploration. It is patiently but persistently pursuing Ceres, the second destination on its interplanetary itinerary.

Emily Lakdawalla

Just a quick update: Chang'e 3 successfully entered lunar orbit today at 09:53 UTC, after a 361-second lunar orbit insertion burn.

Casey Dreier

Decisions about both the 2014 and 2015 budgets are happening soon.

Bill Nye

Bill Nye writes President Obama arguing that the President should embrace a bold future of planetary exploration.

Bruce Betts

Comet ISON captivated our world, and many of our world’s robotic emissaries for many months. But, alas, poor ISON is dead -- again. Here I wrap up our enthusiastic coverage of this multi-morphing zombie comet that tried to survive and re-survive as it came within one solar diameter of the Sun.

Emily Lakdawalla

I'm returning to the deep dive into the literature that began with articles about lunar basins and then explored the geologic time scales of Earth, Moon, and Mars. Now it's time to catch up to the last decade of Mars research and learn what

Emily Lakdawalla

Comet ISON reached perihelion at 18:25 UT (10:25 PT) on November 28. It's an event that's was watched around the world, accompanied by tons of commentary and streams of photos. We will update this blog entry periodically with links to all the resources that we hear of for following the comet's progress.

Emily Lakdawalla

Chang'e 3 is just about to land on the Moon, and the LADEE orbiter has begun a new science mission there, while Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is still producing amazing images.

Bruce Betts

We present an update and a video about the successful design, construction, and testing in a vacuum chamber by Honeybee Robotics of a prototype PlanetVac system, a new planetary surface sampling technique, sponsored by The Planetary Society. PlanetVac is a reliable system that effectively vacuums up planetary surface materials.

Casey Dreier

Voyager Chief Scientist Ed Stone was the featured guest on the Colbert Report to celebrate the spacecraft's entry into interstellar space.

Casey Dreier

Budget cuts mixed with a new way to fund science could disproportionately impact the next generation of planetary scientists.