Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

A reader comment inspired me to dig up an oldie but a goodie: a sequence of photos of the Moon transiting Earth, seen from a very long way away,

Bruce Betts

NASA planetary scientist David S. McKay has passed away. He had an enormous impact on planetary studies over the course of his career. He also was a co-investigator on The Planetary Society LIFE experiments.

Emily Lakdawalla

There was a press briefing today to announce that Curiosity has completed her last major first-time activity: powder drilled from inside a rock at John Klein successfully made its way into the CHIMRA sample handling mechanism in the turret. Sol 193, then, marks the day that Curiosity is finally ready to start the science mission.

Van Kane

Imagine you had a Hubble-class telescope and could use in any way you wanted to explore planets. What would you do with it?

Mat Kaplan

Professor Bell's topic is

Emily Lakdawalla

A frequently-asked question last week was: if asteroid 2012 DA14 is coming so close to Earth, why hasn't anyone taken any pictures of it? Now that 2012 DA14 has whizzed past us, we do finally have some radar pictures of it, but they still may not satisfy everyone.

Louis D. Friedman

Executive Director Emeritus Louis Friedman writes about Asteroid programs of The Planetary Society.

Mat Kaplan

SEE IT NOW: The Planetary Society's CEO, Bill Nye the Science Guy, joined Director of Projects Bruce Betts for a live webcast as 2012 DA14, a 45-meter asteroid, was passing Earth. Bill and Bruce also marveled at video of the meteor burst high over a city in Russia.

Bill Dunford

When the sunlight catches it just right, Saturn's F Ring is something to see.

Edward Gomez

Mostly the Universe stays unchanged for hundreds, thousands or even millions of years. There are some cases however when some things change really rapidly. Recently I observed one of these rapidly changing, transient phenomena, as asteroid called 2012 DA14. I work for Las Cumbres Observatory and we have been trying to observe this asteroid since 5 February.

Emily Lakdawalla

Last week, I posted an explainer on why Hubble's images of galaxies show so much more detail than its images of Pluto. Then I set you all a homework problem: when will New Horizons be able to see Pluto better than Hubble does? Here's the answer.

Emily Lakdawalla

A large meteor streaked through the skies above Russia on the morning of Feb 15th, causing a deafening sonic boom that shattered windows and injured hundreds.

Damia Bouic

Damien Bouic received some well-deserved recognition from the Chemcam team for his great Curiosity image processing work.

Heidi Hammel

Preliminary estimates show that the meteoroid was 15 meters wide and weighed roughly 8000 tons. The resulting airburst would have the equivalent yield of about a 1/2 megaton explosion.

Casey Dreier

Brand new information about the effects of the across-the-board cuts known as Sequestration, if they were to be enacted.

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla and Courtney Dressing talked about just how common Earth-sized exoplanets may be in our neighborhood. Watch the replay here.

Emily Lakdawalla

How come Hubble's pictures of galaxies billions of light years away are so beautifully detailed, yet the pictures of Pluto, which is so much closer, are just little blobs? I get asked this question, or variations of it, a lot. Here's an explainer.

Casey Dreier

NASA released its Spinoff 2012 report, detailing the numerous technology transfers, inventions, and economic impact by the U.S. space program.

Emily Lakdawalla

While researching another story, I came across an image I don't remember ever seeing before, of a moonrise from an unexpected source.

Larry Crumpler

We have been seeing lots of small light-colored veins crossing through the outcrops here on Matijevic Hill, and we have tried to get a handle on the composition of these veins by doing multiple offsets with the APXS. It appears that the small veins are calcium sulfate, as best we can determine.