All
All
Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
New maps of Enceladus and other moons
Every time Cassini gets reasonably close to one of the moons of Saturn, whether the close approach is a targeted one or just an opportunistic encounter, its planners usually take advantage of the proximity to take a bunch of photos.
Carnival of space 3D special
Stuart Atkinson has prepared a
Talking Lasers on Aussie Radio
Through a crazy random happenstance, I was just interviewed by a friend of a friend of a friend at Australian radio station 'triple j' for a feature on lasers!
Happy solstice -- on Mars
It's the solstice on Mars today: summer in the north, winter in the south.
Moon Zoo is ready for you
I'm delighted to point you to a citizen science project for wannabe space geologists like me: Moon Zoo.
A Martian Moment in Time, revisited
A good start to my day today: The New York Times' Lens Blog featured the
Planetary Society Tells Congress "Reassert Optimism, Inspire Future Generations"
Two weeks ago, The Planetary Society submitted a statement to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee considering the fiscal year 2011 budget request for NASA.
Radar glories in Titan rivers
Wow, this is a cool paper. Here's the gist: the Cassini RADAR team has spotted some river channels on Titan that shine so brightly in radar images, there must be something special going on to explain that brightness.
Jupiter has lost a belt!
Via Daniel Fischer's Tweet about a blog entry by Astro BobI learned of something which should be obvious to anyone who has trained even a rather small telescope on Jupiter over the past few weeks: one of its iconic stripes is just plain gone.
Akatsuki and IKAROS getting ready for launch, with your names aboard
I've been so focused on the dramatic return of
Some trouble on Voyager 2
Engineers have shifted NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft into a mode that transmits only spacecraft health and status data while they diagnose an unexpected change in the pattern of returning data.
13 things that saved Apollo 13
Universe Today has recently completed a fantastic, thought-provoking series on the near-disaster of the Apollo 13 mission, which unfolded forty years ago last month.
A moment in time
On Mars, at 15:00 local true solar time on May 2, a solitary rover gazed southward across her own dusty deck and snapped three photos, actually three sets of three photos, which were combined to make this view.
Morphology and mineralogy on Mars
A recent entry by Bethany Ehlmann from the blog of the Planetary Geomorphology Working Group of the International Association of Geomorphologists demonstrates how you can combine the power of different types of data to tease out a rich story of the past history of one spot on Mars.
Saturn's hexagon recreated in the laboratory
A lot of readers have expressed interest in the origin of Saturn's north polar hexagon. The hexagon is a long-lived pattern in the clouds surrounding Saturn's north pole, which has been observed since the Voyagers passed by in 1980 and 1981.
Space carnival, rover update, Planetary Radio Live!
Just a linky post today, as I am nanny-less.
Snapshots from the move, part 1
Here are a few photos taken on Friday, April 30, 2010, The Planetary Society's very last day in our old headquarters at 65 North Catalina Avenue in Pasadena.
Dawn Journal: Matching Paces with Vesta
Dawn remains on course and on schedule for its appointments with Vesta and Ceres, colossal protoplanets in the main asteroid belt.
The Planetary Society is moving on up
After 25 years in our big brown house at 65 North Catalina Avenue in Pasadena, The Planetary Society is moving on Monday to new headquarters at 85 South Grand Avenue, still in Pasadena.
What's up in the solar system in May 2010
There's one new mission and two promoted ones in this month's roundup: I've added JAXA's Akatsuki Venus Climate Orbiter for the first time, and both Hayabusa and Rosetta have been promoted from the



Sun
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Small Bodies