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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Getting ready for Hayabusa's touchdown
In a further update on Hayabusa's status, we have been contacted by Kazuya Yoshida of the Space Robotics Laboratory at Tohuku University. Yoshida reports that the touchdown is now planned to take place
Another Hayabusa update: small delay
There has been a delay of just about a day in JAXA's plans for landing Hayabusa on Itokawa.
Amazing Hayabusa images
These photos pretty much speak for themselves. They are amazing. Hayabusa saw its own shadow on Itokawa, and took a photo of the released target marker.
An update on the Huygens Doppler Wind Experiment
While I was at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting in Cambridge in September I had a chance to chat with David Atkinson, who's a member of the Doppler Wind Experiment team on Huygens. They and the other instrument teams have been plugging away at analyzing their data.
The Planetary Society and the Search for Extrasolar Planets
Almost since it was founded in 1980, The Planetary Society has been there for the search for other worlds.
Cassini Poised to Pinpoint Huygens' Landing Site At Last
I've just posted a very brief update on the upcoming Titan flyby, which will be the first to include RADAR imaging across the Huygens landing site.
NOW Mars is spectacular
Back in August, there was a false alarm being circulated by email that Mars was going to be super-close to Earth on August 27.
A way-cool Cassini picture: rings, Titan, Dione, Prometheus
I just noticed this picture on the Cassini raw images website. I love these
Animation from Cassini's approach to Dione
The images from Cassini's Dione encounter yesterday have started coming back, and there is a really cool set of 16 pictures of Dione and Rhea.
Dione encounter today
Cassini is already on its way in to a close, 500-kilometer encounter with Dione -- it's less than four hours away now, at 17:52 UTC.
Hyperion in color
Here is a gorgeous color mosaic of Hyperion assembled by amateur image processor Mattias Malmer from images from the recent flyby.
A new Cassini data release to the Planetary Data System
Yesterday, this quarter's release of Cassini data showed up at the Planetary Data System (PDS). The PDS is the public repository for all of NASA's data.
A piece of a new picture from Hayabusa
The Hayabusa mission has proven to be a bit of a tease -- they were releasing lots of images to the public as they approached asteroid Itokawa, but once they arrived, the image releases shut down entirely. There is finally a little postage stamp of an image captured by Hayabusa at
Amazing views of Hyperion
I've finally worked my way through all of the Hyperion images that were returned from the last flyby. It's a wonderful data set.
Another day, another natural disaster on Earth seen from space...
...but this one is much closer to home than Katrina and Rita were.
An opportunity for Spirit to see Earth and Venus together?
I received the following question by email last week:
Modest scopes could help with the Hyperion observations
I got an email last night from Anne Verbiscer, whom I had contacted about rounding up some amateur astronomers to help the Cassini mission with some photometric observations of Hyperion.
A debate about time
I received a press release in my inbox this morning that made me think. It came from the Royal Astronomical Society, and was titled
An official pronouncement may be coming about the "what is a planet?" debate
Since the discovery of 2003 UB313, larger than Pluto, there's been a lively debate going on in many places about what makes a planet. There's now an article in Nature talking about a proposal that would address the controversy