Articles

On April 12, 2013, the world’s biggest space party will take place across the globe. So far there are 190 parties in 32 countries on 6 continents registered and counting!!

Emily Lakdawalla

Some silly fun to brighten your Wednesday.

Michael Poston

The case for water ice hidden in permanently shadowed regions at the north pole of the planet Mercury received another boost recently. On Wednesday March 20, 2013 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Nancy Chabot presented the very first visible-light images of what is in the shadows of these polar craters.

Van Kane

Aviation Week and Space Technology reports that the President’s next budget request for NASA will include funds to begin developing a mission to bring an asteroid to the Earth-moon system.

Emily Lakdawalla

This very accessible textbook begins at the beginning, explaining how all the things in the solar system were made from star stuff.

Bill Dunford

Explore the mysterious Martian landscape with the workhorse of the Solar System, Mars Odyssey.

A.J.S. Rayl

As the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission trekked further into its tenth year of exploring the Red Planet, Opportunity spent the month of March finishing up its science investigations on Matijevic Hill.

Emily Lakdawalla

India's Mars Orbiter Mission has been much in the news in Asian media over the last week as a result of the release of ISRO's Annual Report 2012-2013. Also, ISRO and NASA issued a joint statement from Washington a week ago endorsing interagency cooperation in the space sciences

Marc Rayman

Marc Rayman's latest Dawn journal explains the temperature adjustments engineers make to save power and keep the spacecraft warm.

Emily Lakdawalla

Curiosity is back to science operations, though the activities are limited in scope by the fact that conjunction is fast approaching. Here's a couple of neat images from sol 227.

Larry Crumpler

Flash memory or computer problems oddly occurred on both Curiosity and Opportunity around Feb 27. One possibility is that a large solar flare resulted in radiation at Mars sufficient to temporarily corrupt the memory on both rovers.

Bill Nye

The Planetary Society just achieved a major victory in our efforts to ensure strong funding for NASA’s planetary exploration.

Casey Dreier

Sequestration claims its next victim at NASA, as all Education and Public Outreach activities are suspended until further review.

Emily Lakdawalla

On Thursday at noon PDT / 1900 UTC I'll report on some of my favorite findings from LPSC, and answer your questions about the latest planetary science.

Emily Lakdawalla

In which I complain just a little bit about talks at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Emily Lakdawalla

Some interesting results from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference on clay minerals on Mars and what they might mean about ancient water.

Casey Dreier

The President signed the Senate's bill to fund the government for the remainder of 2013, and it includes some positive news for NASA's Planetary Science division, which is facing a 21% cut.

Emily Lakdawalla

Reports from the March 19 session at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference covering eight icy moons in the outer solar system: Ganymede, Europa, Dione, Rhea, Mimas, Tethys, Enceladus, and Miranda.

Van Kane

Last week, planetary scientists gathered for the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Van Kane rounds up some of the future mission concepts presented.

Mat Kaplan

The extended, mostly unedited recordings of my conversations with many of the people I spoke to at the ALMA Observatory in Chile. Also, the full English translation of Chilean President Sebastian Pinera's speech.