Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

It's a legal holiday here in the U.S. (President's day), and my daughter's babysitter is taking the day off, so I won't be getting much work done today. But I thought I'd check in to share the fact that, as we got out of the car last week, my daughter pointed up in the sky at the crescent moon and said

Emily Lakdawalla

According to a press release issued this morning by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the enormous solar flare that erupted on December 5 and 6 last year was accompanied by an intense radio burst that caused large numbers of Global Positioning System recivers to stop tracking the signal from the orbiting GPS satellites.

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.

Emily Lakdawalla

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

Emily Lakdawalla

Read that title aloud. Yes, the last minute of 2005 is actually 61 seconds long.

Emily Lakdawalla

A fun NASA explainer just crossed my email inbox and I thought I'd share it.

Emily Lakdawalla

...but this one is much closer to home than Katrina and Rita were.

Emily Lakdawalla

I received a press release in my inbox this morning that made me think. It came from the Royal Astronomical Society, and was titled

Emily Lakdawalla

On August 2, 2005, MESSENGER flew by Earth at an altitude of a mere 2,347 kilometers above Mongolia.

Emily Lakdawalla

MESSENGER is now returning images as it is bearing down on Earth.

Emily Lakdawalla

As MESSENGER began its approach for its August 2 flyby of Earth, its cameras have snapped their first images. The images clearly show a cloudy Earth—and, to scientists' surprise, the Moon as well.

Emily Lakdawalla

New observations reported this week in the journal Nature have cast doubt on the theory that thick deposits of ground ice lie conveniently close to the surface in permanently shadowed crater floors at the lunar poles.

Charlene Anderson

Home. Family. This will be Voyager's enduring legacy: It has changed forever the feelings raised by those words. Through its robotic eyes we have learned to see the solar system as our home. Through its portraits of the planets we know that they are part of our family. Apollo astronauts showed us a tiny Earth alone in the blackness of space. Now, with these images, Voyager has shown us that Earth is not really alone. Around our parent Sun orbit sibling worlds, companions as we travel through the Galaxy.

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla reports on her expedition to Devon Island, where The Planetary Society is taking steps toward the goal of humans and robots working together to explore Mars.

Emily Lakdawalla

Haughton Crater measures about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in diameter, and was formed 23 million years ago when either an asteroid or a comet collided with our planet.

Andrew Chaikin

Apollo gave us our money's worth. The Apollo lunar samples, totaling 381 kilograms (838 pounds), along with thousands of photographs and other data, are still yielding clues to the world that has been our Rosetta stone for deciphering planetary evolution.

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan writes that once upon a time, we soared into the solar system. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was Apollo really about?