Articles

Ryan Anderson

The other day in Mars journal club, we took a look at a paper about the

Emily Lakdawalla

I've spent a pleasurable hour or so browsing over the latest release of images from Cassini to the Planetary Data System.

Ryan Anderson

Well folks, I'm headed off to Big Sky Country tomorrow (aka Montana)! I'll start the week at the MSL camera team meeting, where I will get all sorts of cool news about the MastCam, MAHLI and MARDI cameras which I will not be able to share with you.

A.J.S. Rayl

Winter lingers in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, but the Sun is beginning to rise higher in the sky and temperatures are slowly rising, signs the Mars Exploration Rovers are heading into spring. While Spirit continued hibernating, Opportunity took in the warmth of the Sun, captured its first dust devil, and picked up the pace in Meridiani Planum on the long journey to Endeavour Crater. Together, the rovers marked six and a half years of exploration.

Emily Lakdawalla

Spirit hasn't talked to Earth since March 22 -- so what new information could they have received that would make them pronounce Spirit's possible death? Is there some new analysis of the last bit of telemetry? Some new model indicating Spirit's survival was less likely than previously thought?

Louis D. Friedman

Yesterday, the Planetary Society issued a statement about the request that the U.S. House of Representatives suspend the rules when voting on the NASA Authorization bill, saying, in part,

Jim Bell

If you've never seen a total eclipse of the Sun, make sure to put one on your bucket list!

Emily Lakdawalla

It seems it'll be a relatively routine month for our solar system explorers (if one can ever consider the exploration of an entire solar system by billion-dollar artificially intelligent robots

Ryan Anderson

I'm a little late on this, but I thought I should share the news: MSL now has a good head and neck on its shoulders, and has officially

Marc Rayman

Dawn is flying smoothly through the asteroid belt, now less than a year from entering orbit around Vesta, the first of its two cosmic destinations.

Emily Lakdawalla

This news is no surprise, but I think it's the first such discovery I've heard of: the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team has identified a new crater on the Moon, one that wasn't there when Apollo 15 flew over.

Emily Lakdawalla

Here are two newly processed portraits of Saturn, showing the planet just after its equinox.

Emily Lakdawalla

Three years after New Horizons flew past Jupiter on its way to Pluto, the spacecraft has imaged the giant planet again.

Emily Lakdawalla

During Friday's first roll for Curiosity, there was a lot of banter in the Ustream chat room about all the bunny-suited engineers waving at the cameras and mugging for portraits with the rover. One chat room member,

Louis D. Friedman

While we were in New York for the International Solar Sailing Symposium last week, we held a meeting with the Japanese IKAROS team to discuss technical results and issues in our two projects.

Emily Lakdawalla

Enjoy my extremely low-tech animation of Curiosity's first

Emily Lakdawalla

I am such a nerd. This new map of Mars just brought tears to my eyes. Honestly.

Emily Lakdawalla

Tune in to Ustream right now to see Curiosity, the next Mars rover, on its wheels in the

Emily Lakdawalla

The Saturn system is always in motion, always changing. Saturn itself is a gas giant, with swirling storms, and like the other gas giants it has a host of moons flying around, perturbing each other's motions. And then there's the rings.

Emily Lakdawalla

Since it doesn't look like the Rosetta mission is going to be releasing any color versions of their Lutetia close-encounter images any time soon, I figured it was time to make one.