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.
MESSENGER Rewrites Mercury Textbooks Even Before Entering Orbit
As MESSENGER zoomed toward Mercury for its third flyby, it was commanded to rotate in a maneuver that would help it test a surprising result from the second flyby.
Planetary Radio Q and A: Not-so-gassy giants
On Planetary Radio's
Another marvelous image from Cassini's Nov 2 Enceladus flyby
This image goodie was produced from the raw images from Cassini's close encounter with Saturn's geyser moon Enceladus yesterday by Gordan Ugarkovic.
Data from Kaguya's prime mission to the Moon has been released
Yesterday, the Japanese space agency announced the public release of the data from the primary mission of the Kaguya (a.k.a. SELENE) lunar orbiter.
Voting is Fixed!
There were some issues with the voting widget on the University Science Writing competition, but they have been resolved, and it turns out it was counting the votes all along! So go vote for my post if you haven't done so yet today!
Cassini's Enceladus encounter, with bonus Tethys
Raw images from Cassini's close pass by Enceladus today started appearing on the JPL raw images website, and some less-compressed versions of a few of them showed up on the CICLOPS website.
Dawn Journal: Taking Up Residence in the Asteroid Belt
Dawn has devoted another month to thrusting with its ion propulsion system, ever with its sights set on its rendezvous with Vesta in July 2011.
Vote Early and Often!
Remember when I mentioned a few weeks ago that I submitted a blog post about MSL as an action-adventure hero to ScientificBlogging's science writing competition?
Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Spirit Overcomes Setbacks and Waits for Extraction Orders, Opportunity Takes a Magical Meteorite Tour
The Mars Exploration Rover mission logged another textbook-rewriting month in October 2009 with more discoveries of geologic gems, new robot achievements balanced with equal amounts of challenges and frustrations overcome, topped off with special honors.
Happy Halloween!
Enjoy tonight's nearly-full Moon! I couldn't resist posting these snapshots that Alice Wessen took of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's costume contest.
Fun Friday photo: Titan and Rhea
Cassini recently captured a series of images documenting Rhea passing behind Titan.
FINDS Exo-Earths Starts Up: Testing the Prototype
The prototype that Julien constructed in the lab was taken to Lick Observatory, and we had our first-light run with the fiber in July.
What's up in the solar system in November 2009
There are two -- actually three -- big things to look forward to this month.
Einstein still rules
News from 7.2 billion light years away demonstrates that some things in this shifting universe are relatively reliable.
Arizona Daily Star reports MRO managers working to avoid "unlikely but potentially fatal scenario"
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been in safe mode for nine weeks, since August 26, the date of the fourth in a series of safing events.
HiRISE sees Phoenix in the Martian spring
These Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE images of the defunct Phoenix lander in the early dawn light of northern spring have been out for some time, but no one had accomplished the difficult task of locating the Phoenix hardware in them until this week.
Gorgeous high-res image of the Apollo 17 landing site
The LROC team posted today a new image of the Apollo 17 landing site, captured after Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter had gotten in to its 50-kilometer mapping orbit, so this is much more detailed than the previous view.
Optical SETI's Growing Capabilities
Often, the phrase “next steps” has been known to describe things that don't actually happen. But for The Planetary Society's All-sky Optical SETI, it's different. Here's what's happened in the last year.
What "phase angle" means
As is probably obvious by now, I love playing with spacecraft image data. I am always looking for excuses to dive into space image archives to unearth images of stuff in space that haven't really been seen by very many people before.