Explore Worlds
Find Life
Defend Earth
All
All
Sun
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Closes in on Endeavour as Team Bids Farewell to Spirit
Opportunity seemed to sail with the wind behind her back toward the western rim of Endeavour Crater this month as the Mars Exploration Rover team shifted gears in preparation for a whole new adventure, taking time out only to bid a final farewell both privately and publicly to Spirit.
Mountains rising for Opportunity
The views from Opportunity of Endeavour's near and distant rim peaks are getting ever more vertical as Opportunity approaches Cape York.
What's up in the solar system in August 2011
August is supposed to be a lazy summer vacation month, but there's quite a lot going on in the solar system.
Phobos-Grunt and Yinghuo-1 have completed thermal vacuum testing
The Russian Phobos sample return mission, Phobos-Grunt, has passed a key milestone in its preparation for launch: it successfully completed its thermal vacuum testing in June.
A different face of Vesta (oh, *there's* the craters!)
Here's the latest image release from Dawn at Vesta, taken from an altitude about twice as high as that of their first mapping orbit.
What's up in human spaceflight: a Dragon approaches
Private spaceflight company SpaceX has secured tentative approval with NASA to combine its next test flight with an actual ISS docking.
Origins 2011 conference, part 2
In this, my second blog on Origins 2011 in Montpellier, France, a conference dedicated to the interdisciplinary research on the origins of life, I aim to provide my impression of the second half of the conference.
Pretty movie: Everything in the Saturn system is in motion!
A few weeks ago a producer for a public television space documentary asked me if I knew of any cool Cassini animations and my answer was,
Dawn Journal: Dawn has arrived!
After covering 2.8 billion kilometers (1.7 billion miles) on its own, after traveling for nearly four years through the lonely emptiness of interplanetary space, after being bound by the gravity only of the sun, Dawn is finally in orbit around Vesta.
Planetary Society Statement on the Pioneer Anomaly
Planetary Society Members have been supporting Slava Turyshev and his colleagues in their scientific quest to solve the famous Pioneer Anomaly. They have just published a peer-reviewed paper that reports on what may be the last step toward the solution.
It's official now: Curiosity is going to Gale
The news leaked a few weeks ago has turned out to be true: the next Mars rover, Curiosity, will be headed for Gale crater on Mars when it launches at the end of this year.
Vesta does a Hyperion impression
Maybe it's my own peculiar variant of pareidolia, but every time I see a new image of Vesta I'm reminded of some different other lumpy body in the solar system. In the image released just now by the Dawn team, taken from 10,500 kilometers away, I'm seeing Hyperion.
Opportunity's horizon rises -- and maybe brings Cape York into view
For miles and miles of Martian terrain, Opportunity's view forward has contained a distinctive line of hills—the far rim of Endeavour crater.
Spiffy human spaceflight T-shirt!
From Chop Shop, the same guys who brought you my favorite space T-shirt ever, there is now a very cool shirt celebrating the spacecraft and missions of 50 years of human spaceflight, and as before they're donating five bucks to the Planetary Society for every T-shirt sold.
Beginning of the post-shuttle era
At 5:57AM EDT (9:57 UTC) this morning, Atlantis gracefully rolled to a stop on runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center Landing Facility, completing the 135th and final mission of the space shuttle program that started in 1981.
A fourth moon for Pluto
That's right: Hubble observations have yielded the discovery of a third small body orbiting Pluto and Charon.
Vesta in infrared color!
Yet another sharp-eyed reader (I love my readers!) pointed out to me that the German-language release on the MPS website about the latest Vesta image from Dawn included what looked like a tiny thumbnail of a color view.
Your guide to a shuttle landing
The final installment of my three-part series on the basics of shuttle launches and landings. Part III: de-orbiting, re-entering and landing.
Yet another new image of Vesta
A sharp-eyed reader noticed that a size comparison montage posted by the Dawn mission today included an image of Vesta that had not yet been released separately to the public, and it is a very cool one.
Congratulations to the Dawn team on their orbit entry & pretty pictures!
There's a new orbital mission on the map! As of Friday, the relatively small mass of the asteroid Vesta has finally taken hold of its new artificial satellite, Dawn.