Articles

Mat Kaplan

The Benford brothers provide inspiration and hard fact in their excellent new anthology about interstellar travel.

Hadiza Mohammed

Women Rock Science is working with the Knowledge Observatory to create an interactive display of women in astronomy from all over the world for an upcoming science festival.

Casey Dreier

NASA confirmed that a government shutdown could affect pre-launch processing of the MAVEN spacecraft, currently scheduled to launch to Mars on November 18th.

Emily Lakdawalla

A few days ago, I wrote a post about the basins of the Moon -- a result of a trip down a rabbit hole of book research. Here's the next step in that journey: the Geologic Time Scales of Earth and the Moon.

Jason Davis

On Sunday, Orbital Sciences Corporation's Cygnus resupply spacecraft was berthed to the ISS, while SpaceX's upgraded Falcon 9 lifted off from the California coast.

Marc Rayman

On the sixth anniversary of leaving Earth to embark on a daring deep-space expedition, Dawn is very, very far from its erstwhile planetary residence. Now humankind's only permanent resident of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the seasoned explorer is making good progress toward the largest object in that part of the solar system, the mysterious dwarf planet Ceres.

David Shortt

With the recent announcement by NASA that the 36 year-old spacecraft Voyager 1 has officially entered interstellar space at a distance from the sun about four times further than Neptune's orbit, and with Voyager 2 not far behind, it seems worthwhile to explore how humans managed to fling objects so far into space.

Emily Lakdawalla

A paper in press in the Journal of Geophysical Research uses new data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to update our story for the history of the Moon's massive impacts.

Geraint Jones

Recently, almost a thousand researchers gathered in London for Europe’s annual meeting of planetary scientists. Here's a report from one session on cometary science.

Abigail Fraeman

We're two weeks in to ‘Dancing with the Stars’ season 17, and Bill Nye has shown that, true to his TV-theme song lyric,

Van Kane

The European Space Agency will announce two major science missions this November, one of which is likely to be devoted to solar system exploration.

Bill Dunford

The final moments of a lunar orbiter, as told in a song composed by the moon itself.

Stephen J. Pyne

The Voyagers were special when they launched. They have become more so thanks to their longevity, the breadth of their discoveries, the cultural payload they carried, and the sheer audacity of their quest.

Emily Lakdawalla

Curiosity looked up after dark and captured more cool photos of Mars' moons. They include Phobos and Deimos passing in the night, and Phobos entering Mars' shadow.

Dawn Sumner

Dawn Sumner describes the preparations for maximizing the science at Curiosity's short stop at

Jason Davis

Follow along with Roscosmos during the launch of Soyuz TMA-10M using this list of common Russian flight terms.

Mat Kaplan

Two new programs about renewed interest in the technologies that will enable humanity to cross the interstellar gulf. Lou Friedman talks with Mat from the 100-Year Starship Symposium, while physicist and science fiction author Gregory Benford is Mat's guest for a webcast.

Emily Lakdawalla

Indian media reported over the weekend that the Mars Orbiter Mission has passed some senior review, and has been approved to proceed toward a launch date of October 28, a week later than previously planned.

Jason Davis

The private spacecraft Cygnus was forced to abort its first attempt to berth with the International Space Station Sunday morning due to a software glitch.

Casey Dreier

Plutonium-238 provides electricity to deep space missions, but NASA only has a little bit left. A new article in Wired highlights the disastrous consequences of no plutonium for use in space, something the Planetary Society is currently fighting for in Washington, D.C.