Articles

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) are working right through the depths of the winter at their respective locations in Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum. Although the twin robot field geologists are putting in short days and taking quality time to recharge, they still have team members marveling over their latest Martian finds.

Emily Lakdawalla

Over time, Cassini's orbit apoapsis—the point on the orbit that is farthest from Saturn—has been shifting slowly toward Saturn's night side. Lately, this point of view has resulted in some truly lovely photos of the planet.

Emily Lakdawalla

Following immediately on the heels of the release of the

Stephen Grasby

From June 21 to July 6, 2006, a four-person team traveled to Borup Fiord Pass to perform geological field studies to compare with satellite images.

Bruce Betts

Using the Shoemaker NEO Grant funds, Minor Planet Research has purchased a 1.7-terabyte data server for our Asteroid Discovery Station (ADS) education outreach program Through the generosity of Dr. Philip Christensen, this server is housed at the Mars Space Flight Facility (MSFF) at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini's T7 flyby of Titan occurred on September 7, 2005. They've now released the full swath of RADAR image data to the Planetary Data System; here it is for your enjoyment.

Bruce Betts

During a few observation sessions in late April, the new Optical SETI Telescope was already demonstrating its amazing capabilities. Over three nights, the telescope completed 17 hours of observation, under the direction of Paul Horowitz and his team of Harvard graduate students. During that time, the telescope observed 1% of the sky, looking for the briefest flashes of light coming from outer space.

Charlene Anderson

Planetary Society members truly have helped pioneer new techniques in the conduct of science. Our initial investment has returned amazing results that will continue to deliver benefits over years to come.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Sulfur Springs of Borup Fiord Pass, Ellesmere Island, offer an excellent Europa analog.

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) are wheel deep in winter, and still faring well, working hard, and sending home interesting new finds despite the below freezing Martian temperatures. The next month or so will bring the season's coldest temperatures to the rover's present habitats, but so far, no one on the team is losing any sleep over whether or not they'll make it through, because these rovers just keep going and going . . .

Emily Lakdawalla

I just received a MESSENGER mission news update stating that the MESSENGER spacecraft, en route to Mercury via two Venus flybys, has passed another milestone on its long journey: it has, for the last time, passed from Earth's environs toward the inner solar system.

Emily Lakdawalla

New Horizons is spending the summer traversing the asteroid belt. I haven't written a lot about New Horizons lately because the mission has been going so uneventfully well. But now I've got something to write about: data!!

Emily Lakdawalla

Today Nature published an article titled

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rovers are now well into their second Martian winter and, all things considered, both Spirit and Opportunity are faring pretty well for being, essentially, aging Baby Boomers on bitter cold, dusty alien planet some 50 million miles away from home.

Emily Lakdawalla

With the Aurora program under way, the next European mission to Mars will be a rover named ExoMars, to be launched in 2011.

Emily Lakdawalla

This week's releases from the Mars Odyssey THEMIS team included a gorgeous one of the layered interior of Gale crater.

Emily Lakdawalla

This item is a little bit old -- I missed it when it was announced last Monday. ESA issued a press release stating that

Emily Lakdawalla

OK, I finally got a story written about the latest and greatest of the Cassini RADAR data based upon a conversation I had with with Ralph Lorenz late last week.

Emily Lakdawalla

Since the last Titan flyby on April 30, the Cassini RADAR team has been releasing quite a large number of pieces of the swath to the Web.

Emily Lakdawalla

Last week's Cassini Significant Events Report included a detailed play-by-play of the frightening morning of Mayday. I thought it was a very interesting read on how a mission deals with an