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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Spring arrives to Vesta's north pole, as Dawn departs, plus a request for citizen scientists
Dawn's last images of Vesta peek into previously shadowy north polar territory. As the spacecraft leaves Vesta behind, its science team requests help from the public.
Dawn Journal: Back to interplanetary space
After more than a year in orbit, Dawn has left Vesta, beginning the spacecraft's journey to Ceres.
Name That Asteroid!
OSIRIS-REx is will return a piece of the ancient asteroid 1999 RQ36, and it's up to you to come up with a name.
Chang'e 2: The Full Story
An update on China's second lunar orbiter, Chang'e 2, which is now heading for asteroid Toutatis.
Pretty picture: Vesta's crater Aelia in high resolution
I think my favorite features on Vesta are its streaky craters. Today's image release shows one of the streakiest: Aelia, a little crater on the flank of a larger one, near Vesta's equator.
Dawn Journal: The long, slow goodbye
Dawn has completed the final intensive phase of its exploration of Vesta, and it has now begun its gradual departure for Ceres.
A fifth moon for Pluto, and a possible hazard for New Horizons
Pluto is now known to have at least five moons (Charon, Nix, Hydra, P4, and the newly discovered P5), and its burgeoning population might pose a risk to New Horizons during its flyby, three years from now.
Dawn Journal: Seeing Vesta in a New Light
Once again Dawn is diligently mapping Vesta, circling the ancient protoplanet about twice a day, observing the signatures of Vesta's tortured history.
Salacia: As big as Ceres, but much farther away
A newly published paper shows trans-Neptunian object Salacia to be unexpectedly large; it's somewhere around the tenth largest known thing beyond Neptune. It has a companion one-third its size, making it appear similar to Orcus and Vanth.
Zapping Rocks with Lasers to Save the World
The Planetary Society Laser Bees project in Scotland is studying in the lab a potential new technique for deflecting dangerous asteroids: laser ablation.
Hunting Asteroids from a Field in Kansas
TPS Shoemaker NEO Grant Winner Gary Hug hunts near Earth objects from his back yard in Kansas. NPR's Morning Edition picked up on this fascinating story.
Update on yesterday's post about Chang'E 2 going to Toutatis
I have a couple of updates on my post from yesterday: confirmation that Chang'E 2 is indeed gone from L2, and more specifics on encounter dates with Toutatis.
Chang'E 2 has departed Earth's neighborhood for...asteroid Toutatis!?
According to a Chinese spaceflight forum, Chang'E program chief scientist Ouyang Ziyuan recently announced that Chang'E 2 has departed the Sun-Earth L2 point and is now en route to asteroid 4179 Toutatis!
Steins, a jewel in the asteroid belt
A notice of some new names for features on asteroid 2867 Steins inspired me to dig up the data set from the September 5, 2008 Rosetta flyby and explore it to see what it contained.
More Evidence for Impact Origin for Colombia’s Vichada Structure
Evidence continues to pile up that the Rio Vichada structure in Colombia is indeed the largest impact structure in South America.
Cheat sheets for Vesta's craters and Dawn's Vesta timeline
I made myself a cheat sheet to many of Vesta's distinctive-looking craters, and also wrote down a list of the major dates in the timeline of Dawn's exploration of Vesta.
Pretty Pictures: Amazing Asteroid Lutetia
A long-awaited data set is finally public (well, long-awaited by me, at least). The Rosetta team has now published their data from the July 10, 2010 flyby of asteroid (21) Lutetia. This data set is absolutely stunning, and my friends in the amateur image processing community wasted no time in creating art out of it.
What Saturn's moons can tell us about comets (Notes from LPSC 2012)
My notes on a two-part presentation by collaborators Jim Richardson and David Minton about the sizes of things in the Kuiper belt, a story they told by looking at Saturn's moons. How does that work? What connects Saturn's moons to the Kuiper belt is craters.
La Sagra Observatory discovers very near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14
With a new CCD camera configured to shoot rapid, short exposures bought with a Planetary Society Shoemaker NEO Grant we caught near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14.
New "Snapshot From Space": Defending Our Planet
A new installment of our