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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.

What's up in the solar system in April 2011

April 2011 will see MESSENGER begin the science phase of its orbital mission at Mercury, and should, I think, also see the start of Dawn's approach observations of Vesta. At Mars, Opportunity is back on the road again, rolling inexorably toward Endeavour. At Saturn, Cassini will continue its focus on Saturn and Titan science.

What's up in the solar system in March 2011

I don't think there's any question what the big event of this month will be: MESSENGER is finally, finally entering orbit at Mercury on March 18 at 00:45 UTC (March 17 at 16:45 for me).

Butterfly crater on Mars

I've spent the day noodling around in the current issue of Icarus, following up some of the more interesting stories within its table of contents, and came across a picture of this very cool crater -- actually, set of craters -- on Mars.

Find pics and track the rovers in Google Mars

I think a goodly proportion of you readers have already figured this out for yourselves since it was launched last March, but I didn't download and install it until last weekend, so this is new to me: Google Mars is awesome.

Rebooting Odyssey

I just received one of those chillingly-titled missives from JPL:

A shift in orbit for Mars Odyssey

Last week, the Mars Odyssey team announced that their mission is being extended another two years. This mission extension will be slightly different from previous mission phases due to a planned change in the spacecraft's orbit.

Mars Budget Cuts

Exploring another planet is an expensive business. We all know this, but sometimes it hits home harder than others. Today was one of those times.

Finding images from Mars

There have been so many missions to Mars, which have sent back so much data, that figuring out how to find images of places on Mars can be really overwhelming.

Mars Odyssey is in safe mode

According to an update posted on the Athena website by Steve Squyres this morning, the Mars Odyssey orbiter has gone in to safe mode.

NOW Mars is spectacular

Back in August, there was a false alarm being circulated by email that Mars was going to be super-close to Earth on August 27.

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