Articles

Van Kane

Last decade, cost overruns on a number of planetary missions stretched NASA's budget. Recent missions have stayed within budget, but the cost of fiscal discipline may mean staying close to home.

Jason Davis

Fyodor Yurchikhin, Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano lifted off in their Soyuz TMA-09M at 4:31 p.m. EDT and arrived at the International Space Station six hours later.

Emily Lakdawalla

Despite the fact that Voyager 2 returned relatively few high-resolution images from either Uranus or Neptune, there are many more photos in the archives than regularly make it to public view.

Bill Dunford

Nothing reflects the romance of deep space exploration more than the evocative names of places on the planets and moons.

Mat Kaplan

A live conversation about just a few of the powerful new instruments that will revolutionize our knowledge of the cosmos once again.

A.J.S. Rayl

Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity left Cape York on May 14th and embarked on a 2-kilometer journey south along the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The rover is heading now to Solander Point, where it will spend the coming Martian winter.

Emily Lakdawalla

A girl named Hope Johnson performing an homage to Tom Lehrer's

Larry Crumpler

Opportunity finally started driving south from its location on the outcrop where it had been since solar conjunction.

Alex Karl

Partnering with our friends from The Planetary Society, the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC), whose members hail from all over the globe, is bringing you an update on our activities and something you can join in on—at least if you are a student or young professional aged 18–35.

Emily Lakdawalla

The American Astronomical Society has issued a strongly worded statement against NASA's proposed elimination of its education and public outreach programs, and I agree with it.

Emily Lakdawalla

Jon Lomberg

This week Jon Lomberg is attending the Starship Century conference, which brings together scientists, writers, and futurists to imagine the future of interstellar travel. Here he reports on presentations by Freeman Dyson, Peter Schwartz, Robert Zubrin, Geoff Landis, Neal Stephenson, and Patti Grace Smith.

Casey Dreier

The Planetary Society just returned from a big trip to Washington, D.C. to advocate for continued planetary exploration. Here's what happened.

Emily Lakdawalla

A couple of articles on India's Mars Orbiter Mission were published on the news website The Week yesterday, and they're much more in-depth and insightful than the norm.

Jon Lomberg

This week Jon Lomberg is attending the Starship Century conference, which brings together scientists, writers, and futurists to imagine the future of interstellar travel. The organizers are Greg and Jim Benford, and among the attendees are: David Brin, Neal Stephenson, Vernor Vinge, Joe Haldeman, Alan Steele, Geoffrey Landis, Freeman Dyson, Jill Tarter, Paul Davies, Nalaka Gunawardene, and Daniel Richter.

Emily Lakdawalla

For most of April, while Mars scuttled behind the Sun as seen from Earth, both Mars rovers were pretty inactive. Now that conjunction has ended, both are doing what rovers should be doing: roving and exploring. As of sol 3312 Opportunity had moved more than 300 meters southward toward Solander Point, while on her sol 279 Curiosity drilled at a second site, Cumberland.

Bill Dunford

Mars gives up its secrets through the unseen colors of its rocks.

Emily Lakdawalla

A look at an older paper describing Galileo's possible sighting of individual ring particles orbiting Jupiter as companions to its inner moon Amalthea.

Emily Lakdawalla

Next week I'm traveling to speak at two events. Registration is still open for both, so I hope some of you can come. I also have some commentary on women being invited to speak at public events.

Alan Stern

Back in 2005 and 2006, when Pluto’s second and third moons (Nix and Hydra) were discovered, searches by astronomers for still more moons didn’t reveal any. So the accidental discovery of Pluto’s fourth moon by the Hubble Space Telescope in mid-2011 raised the possibility that the hazards in the Pluto system might be greater than previously anticipated.