Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

The Planetary Society is contributing this thing called the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE) to Russia's Phobos sample return mission -- it's basically a sealed puck with dormant microbes inside that'll fly to Mars and back in the return capsule, and biologists will take a look to see what damage the little bugs suffered during their space journey.

Emily Lakdawalla

In the past week there have been 25th anniversaries of two events in 1986, one great, one terrible: the closest approach of Voyager 2 to Uranus on January 24, and the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger upon liftoff on January 28.

Mat Kaplan

The launch has been scrubbed once again due to a critical hydrogen leak detected once fueling had been underway for a while.

Mat Kaplan

Discovery has suffered an electrical problem related to one of the main engines. Thanks to delays related to that, and to weather concerns, the launch was scrubbed until Friday at 3:04pm.

Mat Kaplan

Mat Kaplan is at the Kennedy Space Center, 22 hours before shuttle Discovery is due to launch. Parts of the KSC are old and uncared for, while others are at the bleeding edge of space-flight technology.

Mat Kaplan

A brief musing on the public opinion of the shuttle when it was first unveiled, and now, as it's about to be retired.

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.

Charlene Anderson

To see the bigger picture, it can help to step back a bit from your current position. Sometimes you need to consider the past to inform your vision for the future.

Pam Chadbourne

Pam Chadbourne, one of the many engineers who made the Magellan Radar Mapper mission possible, sent this note out to Magellan team members this morning, and graciously permitted me to post it here.

Emily Lakdawalla

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.

Ken Kremer

Planetary Society volunteer Ken Kremer witnessed the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on its STS-131 mission to the International Space Station in person and filed this report on the successful mission.

Emily Lakdawalla

Space Station astronaut Soichi Noguchi is an awesome photographer. This image is going straight into the

Emily Lakdawalla

This is from the

Ken Kremer

Planetary Society volunteer Ken Kremer is reporting for us from the Kennedy Space Center, where he is covering the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour, set to launch this weekend.

Ken Kremer

The crew for the STS-130 flight of shuttle Endeavour arrived at the Kennedy Space Center late in the evening on Tuesday February 2. Blastoff is slated for February 7 at 4:39 AM and will be the final night time shuttle launch.

Ken Kremer

Space Shuttle Atlantis and her crew of six rocketed into orbit on Monday (November 16) precisely as planned at 2:28 PM EST from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.

Ken Kremer

Under overcast skies and unusually cold Florida weather, the six man astronaut crew of STS 129 flew into Cape Canaveral on November 12 aboard a NASA Gulfstream II jet.

Emily Lakdawalla

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.

Louis D. Friedman

The Augustine Committee, which is reviewing the U.S. human space flight program, presented its final report today at a NASA press conference.

Samuel Lawrence

For over four decades, the lunar science community has absorbed the information from the Apollo missions. Although many important questions were answered, many important new questions are waiting to be tackled -- which is the very essence of science and exploration.