Articles

Matt Renninger

This year’s International Astronautical Congress (IAC) is being held in Adelaide, Australia. Thanks to the generous support of our members, The Society’s advocacy and outreach capability is rapidly expanding, and we decided to step up our IAC advocacy this year.

Emily Lakdawalla

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Voyager missions, we're making publicly available seven back issues of The Planetary Report that chronicled the grand tour of the giant planets.

Jason Davis

Is the quest for flight by light approaching a tipping point? Representatives from the NEA Scout, CubeSail and StarChip missions discuss how their spacecraft are advancing the art of solar sailing.

Aaron Campbell

Planetary Society intern Aaron Campbell recaps his experience working on Capitol Hill over the course of two summers.

Casey Dreier

The proposed $19.5 billion would be less than the agency received in 2017, and substantially less than that proposed by the House for the coming year.

Jason Davis

LightSail 2 and Prox-1 are expected to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy no earlier than April 30, 2018.

Casey Dreier

The Space Policy and Advocacy team has released its first in a series of regular program updates on our activities, actions, and priorities in our effort to promote space science and exploration in Washington, D.C.

Casey Dreier

When a Society member met with his member of Congress, he told us about it, and we followed up.

Harriet Brettle

Earlier this month, The Planetary Society brought together space enthusiasts at Queen Mary University of London for “SpaceUp London 2017”—the first large-scale event organized by Planetary Society volunteers in Europe.

Jason Davis

Scientists have found what appears to be a 250-kilometer-wide crater near the Falkland Islands. Is it ground zero for Earth's largest-ever extinction event?

Casey Dreier

NASA’s robotic Mars Exploration Program is on a troubling path of decline—and decisions must be made now in order to stop it. A new report by the Society explains why.

Jason Davis

Georgia Tech's Prox-1 spacecraft has arrived at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where it will be integrated with LightSail 2. The SmallSats will ride to orbit on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in December 2017 or later.

Kate Howells

It’s an exciting time for Canada in space. It’s also an exciting time for Canadian space advocacy, as The Planetary Society's Global Community Outreach Manager Kate Howells describes.

Jason Davis

The White House's 2018 federal budget request includes $19.1 billion for NASA, which is a 3 percent drop from 2017. We broke down the details.

Erin Greeson

Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” In a nod to Sagan (Bill’s Astronomy professor at Cornell University), Bill unveiled his own shiny version of a crude model.

Casey Dreier

The President signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017, funding the U.S. government for the remainder of the fiscal year. NASA got a boost to $19.65 billion, and its Planetary Science Division saw a budget increase to $1.846 billion—its best budget in more than ten years.

Jason Davis

The Planetary Society's LightSail project has roots in a late-1970s NASA plan to send a giant solar sail spacecraft to Halley's Comet. Now, a cache of archival documents adds new depth to the audacious plan.

Jason Davis

Here are some recent reports from our NEO Shoemaker Grant program asteroid observers, who are quite literally trying to save the world.

Casey Dreier

We break down every sentence from Trump's new NASA budget, so you don't have to.

Jason Davis

Following a pre-ship review at Planetary Society headquarters, LightSail 2 is ready to be integrated with its Prox-1 partner spacecraft. The final shipping schedule, however, has yet to be determined.