Articles

Van Kane

Van Kane presents one of the three missions from the latest round of NASA Discovery proposals with the goal of exploring Mars' moons.

Van Kane

The second in a series of meetings to select the landing site for the Mars 2020 rover is in progress. Van Kane gives us an update.

Van Kane

Van Kane rounds up some of the latest NASA Discovery mission proposals aiming to explore our solar system's smallest bodies.

Van Kane

NASA recently announced the Mars Cube One (MarCO) mission, which will fly two CubeSat spacecraft past Mars as part of its larger InSight Mars mission.

Van Kane

Over the last several years, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Applied Physics Laboratory have rethought the entire approach to exploring Europa. NASA now has a concept that's affordable.

Van Kane

In the last two months, there has been significant news about the European-Russian 2018 mission and about NASA’s 2020 rover. NASA also has announced that it would like to send a new orbiter to the Red Planet in the early 2020s.

Van Kane

NASA officials have asked their European counterparts if they would like to propose contributing a small probe to NASA's Europa mission planned for the mid-2020s.

Van Kane

The road to lower costs outer planet missions has been paved by NASA’s first two New Frontiers missions, the $700M New Horizons mission to Pluto and the $1.1B Juno mission to Jupiter. But can the cost of a mission to the outer solar system be cut to $450M, the limit for a Discovery mission?

Van Kane

Van Kane introduces us to EnVision—a proposed European mission to help improve our understanding of Venus.

Van Kane

Van Kane rounds up some recent planetary mission concepts based on CubeSat technology.

Van Kane

Van Kane gives a summary of the 53-page proposed Fiscal Year 2016 NASA Planetary Science budget.

Van Kane

Europe's JUICE spacecraft will provide us with a detailed regional study of this icy moon of Jupiter.

Van Kane

With the release of the official Announcement of Opportunity (AO) early in November, NASA has officially begun the competition to select its next low cost ($450M) Discovery program planetary mission. Because planetary scientists are free to propose missions to any destination in the solar system other than the sun and Earth, these competitions bring out the creativity in the planetary science program.

Van Kane

The past few months have brought announcements for new missions from India and China as well as a wealth of creative ideas for future missions.

Van Kane

Van Kane explains three factors that make exploring Europa hard—factors that can make a mission concept that seems like less actually be more.

Van Kane

Van Kane gives us a tour of the instruments selected for the Mars 2020 rover.

Van Kane

Several announcements for proposed missions to Mars and on the planning for a NASA return to Europa that highlight the contrasts in planning missions for these two high priority destinations.

Van Kane

The Senate and House have both agreed to increase NASA's budget to $17.9 billion, but they have very different ways of spending that money.

Van Kane

NASA’s Mars Exploration Analysis Group (MEPAG) recently reviewed plans by Europe, the Japanese, and NASA for future Mars exploration. The prognosis is for another exciting decade of Mars exploration.

Van Kane

For the last two years, NASA has been the shy partner refusing to get on the dance floor, and Congress has been the aggressive partner insisting on a dance now. The dance is the continuing attempt by Congress to have NASA commit to a mission to explore Europa, and NASA’s attempts to delay a mission well into the 2020s.