Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

After the press conference I asked Mike A'Hearn a couple of questions about the raw images we're seeing online.

Emily Lakdawalla

OK, I'm in...I arrived at an unusually empty Jet Propulsion Laboratory this morning in advance of the first Deep Impact encounter press conference.

Emily Lakdawalla

I know I've probably disappointed a few people by not having had anything much to say about Cosmos 1 for a while. It's because, well, we haven't had anything much to say.

Emily Lakdawalla

In the midst of all this hoopla about Deep Impact, I haven't been able to give the proper attention to Cassini, which began its second year of operations at Saturn today.

Emily Lakdawalla

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft is set for its date with Comet Tempel 1.

Susan Lendroth

The Planetary Society continues to investigate the mystery of what happened to its Cosmos 1 spacecraft - a joint project with Cosmos Studios - that launched last week on a Russian Volna rocket.

Emily Lakdawalla

A reader has pointed out that JPL has changed their online press kit for Deep Impact, which was my primary source material for the encounter timeline.

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rovers are still going strong, and both robot field geologists will be working through the July 4th holiday.

Emily Lakdawalla

With four days remaining until Deep Impact crashes into comet Tempel 1, the comet is looming larger and larger in the public view.

Emily Lakdawalla

Apparently there is a bogus email circulating around the Web with the following text:

Emily Lakdawalla

The Cassini imaging team has released an image containing a feature unlike any other that they have seen on Titan. The very dark color, curvaceous outline, and sharp edge of the feature have led them to the conclusion that it could well be the long-theorized but never-before-seen body of liquid hydrocarbons on the surface of Titan.

Emily Lakdawalla

Less than a week remains before the Deep Impact mission is set to meet its fate at Tempel 1. A mission like this has been a dream for planetary scientists for a long time.

Emily Lakdawalla

Announcing The Planetary Society's Weblog.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini's been in orbit around Saturn for almost exactly a year now, and the mission seems pretty much to have dropped off of the public radar screen. But there's still three years to go on the primary mission, and lots left to do, and I for one am not at all bored.

Louis D. Friedman

The word failure is sticking in my craw. Certainly, we failed to achieve the objective of Cosmos 1: we did not achieve solar-sail flight. But I don’t think, with all we have done, that I can call Cosmos 1 a failure.

Louis D. Friedman

We’ve had a very exciting day here in Moscow. Bud Schurmeier and I met with Konstantin Pichkhadze, head of the Lavochkin Association, which built our spacecraft, Cosmos 1.

Bruce Betts

In the past twenty-four hours, the Russian space agency (RKA) has made a tentative conclusion that the Volna rocket carrying Cosmos 1 failed during the firing of the first stage. This would mean that Cosmos 1 is lost.

Emily Lakdawalla

...we think.

Louis D. Friedman

Speaking by phone to a roomful of journalists in Pasadena less than 2 hours before the expected launch, project director Louis Friedman reiterated his confidence in the entire Cosmos 1 team.

Susan Lendroth

When Cosmos 1, the first solar sail spacecraft, launches on June 21, 2005, it will carry into Earth orbit a CD containing the names of over 75,000 members of The Planetary Society and the Japan Planetary Society, along with the works of early visionaries who inspired solar sailing.