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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.

Asteroid 2005 YU55

Live feeds on asteroid 2005 YU55 as it passes Earth

Unless you've been living under a rock you've probably heard that there is a relatively large (400-meter) asteroid passing closer to Earth than the orbit of the Moon today -- in just a few minutes, as a matter of fact.

Numisia crater, Vesta, in black and white and false color

What do Dawn's color ratio images of Vesta mean?

The Dawn mission to Vesta continues to release an image every day, and recently they have been releasing lots of color images. I like color pictures for aesthetic reasons, but color is actually a very important property of planetary surfaces.

Cornelia, a fresh crater on Vesta

Lovely pic of a recent crater on Vesta

With little fanfare, the Dawn mission continues releasing a new picture from Vesta every day. This one is definitely my favorite among their recent releases, a closeup on one of Vesta's strange streaky bright craters.

Deep Impact high-resolution view of Hartley 2

Brief notes from Day 2 of the DPS-EPSC meeting

It's been a very full day at the DPS-EPSC 2011 joint meeting. My day was less full than it might have been, because I overslept and missed most of the morning's session. I really needed the rest though so I think it was probably for the best!

Vesta shape model

Some first impressions of EPSC-DPS meeting

Today they turned on the scientific fire hose at the Division of Planetary Sciences / European Planetary Science Congress meeting happening here in Nantes, France. My brain already feels full and I still have four more days!

Particle from Itokawa

Reading Itokawa's life history from microscopic samples

When Hayabusa's sample return capsule was first opened and found to be very clean-looking inside, I doubted that there could be enough material for laboratory analysis. JAXA announced later that they scraped about 1500 dust grains from the inside with a teflon spatula, and these likely came from Itokawa.

Human mission to an asteroid

Students Design Human Asteroid Mission in Caltech Space Challenge

I spent much of the past week attending the Caltech Space Challenge, a student-organized international competition to design a human mission to a Near-Earth asteroid. It was a great week, and one of the most positive, upbeat and hopeful programs I have participated in concerning the future of space exploration.

Vesta shape model from high-altitude mapping orbit

Video: Zooming around Vesta

The Dawn team released today a nice little video that flies around a shape model of Vesta produced by DLR, the German Aerospace Corporation, who built and operate Dawn's camera.

Dawn in survey orbit at Ceres

Dawn's cryptic image release titles

Every day's image release from the Dawn spacecraft shows something on Vesta that is weird and cool and difficult to explain. The images come out with very little information describing what is going on to make those weird landscapes.

Solar system montage with eight planets

Vesta's wacky craters

Dawn's images of Vesta show craters upon craters, but the longer I study the images, the wackier the craters look.

High-resolution global view of Vesta in natural color processed from archival data

Vesta, a revelation

I have to admit it: three months ago I did not understand why space science is important. This is a pretty bold statement coming from a practicing aerospace engineer, but recent events have corrected this lack of understanding, and I am not embarrassed to correct myself in this blog. But let us not get ahead of the story.

Vesta's 'Snowman'

What I see in the first high-res Dawn images of Vesta

I had to wait until the kids were in bed and the husband fed last night before I finally had time to sit down and really look at the Dawn images of Vesta. And I still hardly knew where to begin. This brand new world is just so different than others I've seen.

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