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Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Spring arrives to Vesta's north pole, as Dawn departs, plus a request for citizen scientists
Dawn's last images of Vesta peek into previously shadowy north polar territory. As the spacecraft leaves Vesta behind, its science team requests help from the public.
Dawn Journal: Back to interplanetary space
After more than a year in orbit, Dawn has left Vesta, beginning the spacecraft's journey to Ceres.
Name That Asteroid!
OSIRIS-REx is will return a piece of the ancient asteroid 1999 RQ36, and it's up to you to come up with a name.
What's Up in the Solar System in September 2012
It's an active time in interplanetary exploration! Curiosity has begun roving Mars, and Opportunity's not wasting any time either. Dawn has just departed Vesta and begun the more than two-year cruise to Ceres. Juno is in the middle of a big deep-space maneuver, setting up next year's Earth flyby.
Pretty picture: Vesta's crater Aelia in high resolution
I think my favorite features on Vesta are its streaky craters. Today's image release shows one of the streakiest: Aelia, a little crater on the flank of a larger one, near Vesta's equator.
What's up in the Solar System in August 2012
Welcome to the monthly roundup of our solar system's envoy of electronic explorers! All eyes are on Curiosity as it approaches Mars this weekend. Who will lend support at the Red Planet?
Dawn Journal: The long, slow goodbye
Dawn has completed the final intensive phase of its exploration of Vesta, and it has now begun its gradual departure for Ceres.
Dawn Journal: Seeing Vesta in a New Light
Once again Dawn is diligently mapping Vesta, circling the ancient protoplanet about twice a day, observing the signatures of Vesta's tortured history.
What's Up in the Solar System in July 2012
Welcome to my monthly roundup of the activities of our intrepid robotic emissaries across the solar system! Curiosity is about to land; Opportunity has rolled through sol 3000; Odyssey is back online, having switched to a spare reaction wheel; Dawn is now in High-Altitude Mapping Orbit 2; and Cassini is taking advantage of its newly inclined orbit to get spectacular series of images of Saturn's rings.
Steins, a jewel in the asteroid belt
A notice of some new names for features on asteroid 2867 Steins inspired me to dig up the data set from the September 5, 2008 Rosetta flyby and explore it to see what it contained.
Dawn Journal: Riding gravitational currents to HAMO2
Dawn is beginning its departure from Vesta, spiraling upward from its low-altitude mapping orbit to a higher one from which it will map north polar terrain not visible during the earlier mapping orbit.
Dawn Journal: Rising from a happily long LAMO
Marc Rayman's monthly check-in with the Dawn mission describes the achievements of the spacecraft in its Low-Altitude Mapping Orbit (including near-global high-resolution imaging!) and explains what's next.
Cheat sheets for Vesta's craters and Dawn's Vesta timeline
I made myself a cheat sheet to many of Vesta's distinctive-looking craters, and also wrote down a list of the major dates in the timeline of Dawn's exploration of Vesta.
Pretty Pictures: Amazing Asteroid Lutetia
A long-awaited data set is finally public (well, long-awaited by me, at least). The Rosetta team has now published their data from the July 10, 2010 flyby of asteroid (21) Lutetia. This data set is absolutely stunning, and my friends in the amateur image processing community wasted no time in creating art out of it.
Dawn Journal: Saluting the Sun
On April 18, Dawn will attain its greatest separation yet from Earth, nearly 520 million kilometers. Well beyond Mars, fewer than a dozen spacecraft have ever operated so far from Earth.
Dawn Journal: Bonus time at low altitude
Dawn is continuing its exploits at Vesta, performing detailed studies of the colossal asteroid from its low altitude mapping orbit (LAMO).
More Dawn Vesta approach images: First color views
On June 30, Dawn stopped thrusting for a full Vestian day -- five hours and 20 minutes -- and just watched the asteroid rotate. But unlike the previous observations, they used all of Dawn's color filters to acquire the best-ever color photos of the lumpy world.
Dawn images of Vesta! Released!! For everyone!!!
Some time in the last few days, the Dawn team made public the first preliminary version of the first release of their data from the Vesta phase of their mission.
Dawn Journal: How does Dawn know where "down" is?
Since the last log, the robotic explorer Dawn has devoted most of its time to its two primary scientific objectives in this phase of the mission.
At last: Rosetta's Mars flyby photos have been released!
On February 24, 2007, the Rosetta spacecraft passed by Mars, the second of four planetary gravity-assist flybys on its long route to a 2014 rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. At the time, they released two photos from the main science camera, OSIRIS.