Articles

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.

A.J.S. Rayl

Clear skies and a warming Sun brightened winter in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, giving the Mars Exploration Rovers, appropriately enough, an august month. Opportunity packed up, left Cape Verde in the dust, and made headlines when it roved out of Victoria Crater last Thursday. On the other side of the planet, Spirit picked up the pace of photographing its surroundings for its next big, 360-degree, full color panorama.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's official: Opportunity is out of Victoria. A news release from JPL stated today that Opportunity has, as of late yesterday (sol 1,634), exited Victoria crater.

Marc Rayman

The Dawn spacecraft continues to make good progress on its adventure to unlock scientific secrets hidden deep in the main asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter.

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.

Marc Rayman

Dawn continues its flight through the solar system with all systems functioning well.

A.J.S. Rayl

After cruising through winter solstice in late June, the Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) roved into July taking every advantage of a winter that is by all appearances now proving to be rather mild for the Red Planet. At Gusev Crater, Spirit managed to maintain its power level and get back to doing a little bit of science, while on the other side of the planet, at Meridiani Planum, Opportunity finished photographing Cape Verde and began to chart its course back to Duck Bay where it will exit Victoria Crater.

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

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

Marc Rayman

Now using an ion thruster that had been powered off since October, Dawn continues to make steady progress on its journey deeper into space.

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) celebrated a landmark milestone in June as they

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.

A.J.S. Rayl

As Phoenix commanded the headlines with its flawless touchdown in the arctic region of the Red Planet this past month, the Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) forged onward slowly, quietly and out of the spotlight, heading into the depths of their third Martian winter. Spirit persevered and held its own in terms of energy, while Opportunity, after six weeks of being stopped in its tracks with a shoulder joint injury, roved once more.