Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

While I was at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting in Cambridge in September I had a chance to chat with David Atkinson, who's a member of the Doppler Wind Experiment team on Huygens. They and the other instrument teams have been plugging away at analyzing their data.

Emily Lakdawalla

After a 2-week delay in its schedule, the European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft is back on track for launch.

Amir Alexander

Almost since it was founded in 1980, The Planetary Society has been there for the search for other worlds.

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rovers science team witnessed a bit of an expansion down here on Earth this month, while up on the Red Planet Spirit and Opportunity continued roving along. As Halloween nears, the twin robot geologists have put in another solid month's worth of work, overcoming every occasional

Emily Lakdawalla

I've just posted a very brief update on the upcoming Titan flyby, which will be the first to include RADAR imaging across the Huygens landing site.

Emily Lakdawalla

I've just come home from Caltech, where I saw author Dava Sobel give a presentation on her latest book, The Planets.

Emily Lakdawalla

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.

Emily Lakdawalla

I just noticed this picture on the Cassini raw images website. I love these

Emily Lakdawalla

The images from Cassini's Dione encounter yesterday have started coming back, and there is a really cool set of 16 pictures of Dione and Rhea.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini is already on its way in to a close, 500-kilometer encounter with Dione -- it's less than four hours away now, at 17:52 UTC.

Emily Lakdawalla

Here is a gorgeous color mosaic of Hyperion assembled by amateur image processor Mattias Malmer from images from the recent flyby.

Emily Lakdawalla

Yesterday, this quarter's release of Cassini data showed up at the Planetary Data System (PDS). The PDS is the public repository for all of NASA's data.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Hayabusa mission has proven to be a bit of a tease -- they were releasing lots of images to the public as they approached asteroid Itokawa, but once they arrived, the image releases shut down entirely. There is finally a little postage stamp of an image captured by Hayabusa at

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla

I've finally worked my way through all of the Hyperion images that were returned from the last flyby. It's a wonderful data set.

Louis D. Friedman

Cosmos 1 was—and is—a great effort, and one we are proud The Planetary Society tried to do. Our independent grassroots organization built and launched a spacecraft whose technology promises to one day open up interstellar travel.

Emily Lakdawalla

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

Emily Lakdawalla

I received the following question by email last week:

Emily Lakdawalla

I got an email last night from Anne Verbiscer, whom I had contacted about rounding up some amateur astronomers to help the Cassini mission with some photometric observations of Hyperion.

A.J.S. Rayl

Despite a few unexpected bumps and curves in their explorations at Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum, the Mars Exploration Rovers have been working away and both Spirit and Opportunity have put in a very productive month's worth of work on the Red Planet.