Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

The latest on MSL landing sites, a look at comet outbursts, and links to other stuff.

Emily Lakdawalla

Unlike the Mars Exploration Rover mission, which featured two golf-cart-sized landers, this time we have only one giant, Volkswagen beetle-size. So at the end of this process we have to pick our favorite place on Mars, not our favorite two places.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Mars Exploration Rovers have left wheel tracks all over their landing sites, but for some reason this pair of wheel tracks, left in the sand ripple on the rim of Victoria crater and now viewed from below, tickled my fancy. Thanks to James Canvin for the lovely panorama.

Emily Lakdawalla

Lakes have been spotted near the south pole of Titan before, in this image by the ISS team, which was considered compelling but not conclusive at the time.

Marc Rayman

Joining an elite club among spacecraft, Dawn successfully fired up its xenon ion propulsion system on October 6.

Marc Rayman

The Dawn project welcomes you to deep space! Dawn is operating smoothly on the fourth day of its eight-year adventure.

A.J.S. Rayl

It might not be the stuff of Broadway musicals, but the Sun and did

Ken Kremer

At 7:34 a.m. EDT the Delta II Heavy roared off launch pad 17 B at Cape Canaveral with a brilliant flash of glowing orange light and billowing white smoke.

Emily Lakdawalla

This afternoon Alan Stern posted to unmannedspaceflight.com that New Horizons has successfully completed the trajectory correction maneuver that lines the spacecraft up for its July 14, 2015 encounter with Pluto.

Marc Rayman

The countdown is underway for Dawn's liftoff on September 26 at 7:25:00 am EDT. This is the second time our hero has been within a few days of launch.

Marc Rayman

Now less than two weeks from its planned September 26 launch, Dawn is eagerly awaiting the beginning of its fantastic adventure.

Doug Ellison

Mars Exploration Rover scientists, engineers and enthusiasts have been playing the waiting game for 10 weeks, watching the much-reported dust storm subside so that Opportunity could get back to doing what it does best - exploring craters.

Emily Lakdawalla

I just received another batch of

Marc Rayman

NASA is preparing (again) to bring Dawn to the Florida skies as all systems are gearing up for a September 26 launch.

A.J.S. Rayl

With dust from the summer's storms floating down on and all around them, the Mars Exploration Rovers returned to their exploration agendas this month, picking up right where they left off in July when winds kicked the soils up into the southern hemisphere and forced them to hunker down and conserve power.

Emily Lakdawalla

Although Mars' atmosphere continues to be rather dusty, the storm has abated enough that both Mars Exploration Rovers have resumed a relatively normal level of activity. For Opportunity, that means a drive to the very edge of Victoria crater.

Emily Lakdawalla

I haven't written an update on the dust storm at Mars recently for two reasons. For one, the rovers are out of immediate danger, so it wasn't as urgent. The other reason is that Jim Bell wanted Cornell to issue a press release with updated versions of the images and animations I've been putting together from the rovers'

Doug Ellison

Doug Ellison

ESA's planet-hunting satellite COROT bagged its first exoplanet in observations of the star COROT-Exo-1.

Emily Lakdawalla

The skies aren't quite as dark as they have been, for both Spirit and Opportunity. In fact, Spirit has enough power now to be doing a little work with its robotic arm.