Articles

Casey Dreier

The final operating plan for the space agency provided $75 million more to planetary exploration than initially proposed.

Casey Dreier

The Planetary Society is

Marc Rayman

Traveling confidently and alone, Dawn continues to make its way through the silent depths of the main asteroid belt. The interplanetary adventurer is on its long journey to the uncharted dwarf planet Ceres, by far the largest of all asteroids.

Van Kane

The final news for NASA's Planetary Science program is better than had been proposed, but still a substantial cut over the previous year. There may be serious future consequences as a result of the smaller program.

Bruce Betts

I am saddened by the loss of my professor and mentor, Bruce Murray. I celebrate him here by sharing some personal memories and reflections. There is much to respect, and also much to amuse as we reflect on the life of this great man.

Emily Lakdawalla

What Venus Express' Visual Monitoring Camera images of Venus have taught us about the motions of Venus' atmosphere.

Louis D. Friedman

One of the most remarkable minds of 20th century exploration was stilled this morning, August 29, 2013, when Bruce C. Murray died of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 81. The Planetary Society owes its existence to Bruce.

Emily Lakdawalla

News agencies are reporting that China's soft lunar lander and rover, Chang'e 3, has passed its final critical reviews and is now proceeding toward launch.

Mat Kaplan

Planetary Radio guest Leonard David has been writing about space exploration for more than five decades. He has collected analysis from around the world about China's big plans for space exploration.

Bill Dunford

A deep lunar crater exposes some of the Moon's secrets.

Sarah Hörst

By now I hope that everyone has seen some of the spectacular images of the Saturn system (and especially Titan!) from the Cassini-Huygens mission. However, the measurements that often make my heart race are taken by instruments that reveal Titan in ways that our eyes cannot see.

Alan Stern

New Horizons has just completed a summer of intensive activities and entered hibernation on Aug. 20. The routine parts of the activities included thorough checkouts of all our backup systems (result: they work fine!) and of all our scientific instruments (they work fine too!).

Ken Herkenhoff

United States Geological Survey scientist Ken Herkenhoff posts regular updates on the Curiosity science team's plans for the rover on Mars.

Van Kane

A new breed of small planetary spacecraft may allow for more frequent flights to the planets for highly focused missions.

Emily Lakdawalla

LADEE's launch window opens two weeks from today, on September 6. The brief little mission aims to study the lunar atmosphere and dust environment before future soft landings disturb its currently pristine state.

Emily Lakdawalla

Watching MAVEN go through its final launch preparations via the photo gallery at the Kennedy Media Archive.

Björn Jónsson

Björn Jónsson produces beautiful color and 3D global mosaics of Vesta from Dawn's archival data.

Emily Lakdawalla

Those sneaky scientists on Curiosity managed to catch a Phobos transit of the Sun with one set of cameras, and to watch its shadow darkening the surface with another. COOL!

Bill Dunford

Beautiful maps of a mysterious place.

Mat Kaplan

Join Emily Lakdawalla and Mat Kaplan inside JPL's High Bay 1, where two Earth-revealing missions are being readied for launch.