Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Note the special time! In this week's Planetary Society hangout at 5pm PDT / midnight UTC, I'll talk with MESSENGER deputy principal investigator Larry Nittler about what MESSENGER has accomplished in its prime and extended missions at Mercury, and what it stands to do if awarded a mission extension.

Marc Rayman

Marc Rayman's latest Dawn Journal explains why Dawn is currently closer to the Sun than both Ceres and Vesta.

A.J.S. Rayl

As the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) team waited out solar conjunction, Opportunity spent most of April atop the western rim of Endeavour Crater, conducting a chemical analysis of an ancient waterborne vein on Matijevic Hill. It was by the book until the last week of the month when the robot field geologist suffered an electronic

Emily Lakdawalla

New Horizons might see a Pluto with a northern polar cap, a southern polar cap, or both caps, according to work by Leslie Young.

Bruce Betts

9-year-old Mike Puzio of North Carolina submitted the winning name for the asteroid target of NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The Planetary Society, MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, and the University of Arizona asked students around the world to suggest names.

Bill Nye

I meet the future of science in the United States, and I speak directly to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden about my concerns for Planetary Science funding.

Emily Lakdawalla

We received more than 8000 entries from all over the world in the Name That Asteroid contest, and we can finally announce the winner. The asteroid formerly known as 1999 RQ36 is now formally named (101955) Bennu, for a heron associated with the Egyptian god Osiris.

Emily Lakdawalla

In this week's Hangout, Emily Lakdawalla hosted Mike Puzio and Dante Lauretta in a discussion about the naming of OSIRIS-REx' asteroid target.

Alex Parker

This month my latest paper made it to print in the Astronomical Journal. It's a short piece that describes a serendipitous discovery that my collaborators and I made while searching for a distant Kuiper Belt Object for the New Horizons spacecraft to visit after its 2015 Pluto flyby.

Bill Dunford

The first human beings to see the mysterious

Van Kane

Now that groups and individuals have had time to digest the proposed 2014 NASA Planetary Science budget, they are highlighting the impacts of the proposed cuts. We are also getting the first independent reactions to the proposal to bring an asteroid to lunar orbit as a target for human exploration.

Emily Lakdawalla

Virgin Galactic achieved a major milestone today with the first supersonic flight for its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle. The rocket fired for a total of 16 seconds.

Emily Lakdawalla

Last month, I formally entered a new phase of my career: I signed my first book contract. I'll be writing a book about the Curiosity mission through its prime mission, for Springer-Praxis.

Lars Perkins

Lars Perkins, Chairman of NAC's Education Committee, writes a defense of NASA's Education and Outreach efforts, currently facing a major cut and restructuring in 2014.

Casey Dreier

Planetary Society CEO, Bill Nye, just joined the NASA Advisory Council for Education.

Emily Lakdawalla

Check out this absolutely wonderful infographic, produced by Olaf Frohn, that summarizes the entire history of solar system exploration.

Casey Dreier

Live blog of comments and analysis from the House Science Committee's hearing on NASA's 2014 Budget.

Bruce Betts

In 2013, The Planetary Society awarded $34,307 as part of its Gene Shoemaker Near Earth Object (NEO) Grant Program. The grants were made to a group of international researchers to find, track, and characterize potentially hazardous NEOs.

Bruce Betts

Semifinalists ranged in age from 5 to 17 and came from the USA, Brazil, France, India, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.

Emily Lakdawalla

An easy image processing trick -- using lower-resolution color data to colorize a black-and-white photo -- is relied upon by many space missions to keep data volumes low. Here's how to do it.