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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Some bad news for fans of Titan RADAR
According to Jason Perry, the much-anticipated Titan-7 RADAR imagery across Titan's southern hemisphere may have been lost due to an error on Cassini's solid state recorder. That will be very sad if it turns out to be true.
DPS: Back to Day 3 again: finishing up asteroids & Iapetus
Today is the last day of DPS, and the first that has not had a press conference session at lunchtime, so I have a few moments here to do some catching up.
An animation of Itokawa from Hayabusa
This lovely animation of Itokawa represents 20 individual images taken between 18:10 on September 5 and 00:30 on September 6, from a distance of less than 700 kilometers away.
Images from the August 2, 2005 MESSENGER Flyby of Earth
On August 2, 2005, MESSENGER flew by Earth at an altitude of a mere 2,347 kilometers above Mongolia.
A couple of pretty Cassini photos from this week
First, here's a nice shot of Epimetheus, which was taken about a month ago.
A little more Hyperion
Checking the Cassini raw images website, I found quite a few more images of Hyperion this morning. It looks like Cassini had a leisurely flyby of the little moon from roughly 700,000 kilometers' distance.
Updates from Past Recipients of the Shoemaker NEO Grants (17 August 2005)
Following last year's Potentially Hazardous Asteroid and a few other non-main-belt discoveries, I looked into what improvements I could make to more efficiently image the sky. The major advance involved the design of a 3-lens corrector comprising 2 stock lenses and a custom lens I made myself.
MESSENGER is getting close
MESSENGER is now returning images as it is bearing down on Earth.
Cassini tour page revised
Cassini mission planner Dave Seal just gave me the latest reference trajectory for Cassini, so I've gone through and updated the flyby altitudes on the Cassini tour page.
Enceladus is alive!
It's official: Enceladus has joined the rarefied community of Solar System objects that have been caught in the act of making new geology.
Deep Impact Sets a New Course as Tempel 1 Returns to Normal
With its mission at Tempel 1 over, the Deep Impact spacecraft has altered its course in order to allow a future mission at another comet.
A couple cool raw Cassini pics -- and a break in the data
I monitor the Cassini website to keep my eye out for cool pictures, and it's usually relatively easy to figure out what the spacecraft is looking at (rings, moon, Saturn, whatever). Sometimes, though, the images can be very confusing.
A change of plans for Cassini: higher altitude for the "T7" Titan flyby
The June 15 Cassini Project Update includes a note about a difficult decision -- they are raising the altitude of an upcoming Titan flyby,
Deep Impact Data Surprises Scientists
When Deep Impact crashed into the nucleus of Tempel 1 at 23,000 miles per hour on July 4, it sent a huge, bright cloud of stuff upward and outward from the comet, providing a spectacular image that is already assured a place in the space history books, and may well be seared into the brains of all those who watched the event.
Another gorgeous Deep Impact image
The team has just released a really pretty high-resolution view of Tempel 1 just 67 seconds after the impact.
Deep Impact live blog
Live blog from the press room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as Deep Impact's Impactor meets its fate at the comet....
Deep Impact Comet Crash Produces Great Big Comet Flash
The Deep Impact mission seems to have produced an impact crash beyond the expectations, but not the hopes, of the science team.
Views of Tempel 1
It looks like the European Space Agency was busy overnight -- lots of great Earth- and space- based images of the impact have been appearing on various websites.