Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Just a linky post here.

Emily Lakdawalla

The week is finally here: Deep Impact flies past Hartley 2, the smallest comet yet to be visited by a spacecraft, on Thursday, November 4 at 13:50 UTC.

Mat Kaplan

Mat Kaplan relays his experiences and thoughts as he makes his way to the Kennedy Space Center to witness the launch of the shuttle Discovery.

Emily Lakdawalla

Since comet Hartley 2 -- the target of Deep Impact's November 4 flyby -- is near its perihelion, it's no surprise that it's an active comet with lots of outbursts.

A.J.S. Rayl

For the Mars Exploration Rovers, October was a lot like September, which was a lot like August: Spirit continued hibernating at Gusev Crater or so it appears since the rover didn't phone home; and Opportunity picked up the pace to Endeavour Crater again, setting new driving records and marking more milestones along the way.

Emily Lakdawalla

Comet Hartley 2, the target for Deep Impact's close flyby (now just six days away!) made its closest approach to Earth on October 20, at a distance of 17.7 million kilometers.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Cassini Raw Images Website always offers rewards to the browser. This evening I found the raw images necessary to create this color composite, showing the hazy orange moon Titan, the mid-sized icy moon Dione, and the tiny rock Prometheus all at the same time.

Emily Lakdawalla

(I promise that this post will get around to the subject of space exploration in a couple of paragraphs.)

Louis D. Friedman

In mid-October, I attended the First Moscow Solar System Symposium. Its focus was mostly on Phobos science and plans for next year's launch of the Phobos Sample Return Mission (also known as Phobos-Grunt), on which The Planetary Society will be flying the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment.

Emily Lakdawalla

Where's the Cassini Saturn orbiter going to be in the next week -- or hundred weeks? It's all already planned out.

Emily Lakdawalla

The major event of the month will be, of course, Deep Impact's flyby of small comet Hartley 2, which happens at 13:50 UTC on November 4. But there's some other things to take note of.

Emily Lakdawalla

175th Carnival of Space!? That means the Carnival of Space has been going on for nearly 4 years. Or just about 2 Mars years. Pretty amazing.

Emily Lakdawalla

Today was the press briefing that previewed the upcoming Deep Impact flyby of Hartley 2.

Emily Lakdawalla

An awful lot of the talks in the Pluto session on Tuesday morning, October 5, at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting spent more time focusing on how bad weather conditions were during the astronomers' attempts to view Pluto as it occulted background stars than they did on any measurements or science that came out from the data.

Susan Lendroth

Day Two of the USA Science & Engineering Festival, and it started with a game of

Susan Lendroth

The Planetary Society showcased our solar sail mission, Lightsail 1, at day one of the USA Science & Engineering Festival on Washington DC's National Mall.

Louis D. Friedman

Emily Lakdawalla

Curiosity Cam: Watch Men and Women in White build a Mars rover live!

Emily Lakdawalla

Tyler Nordgren's awesome "Planetary Park" posters

Susan Lendroth

The Planetary Society booth is ready to go for the USA Science & Engineering Festival being held this weekend on the National Mall in Washington DC.