Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

253 Mathilde is the largest asteroid that has ever been visited by a spacecraft. It's held that distinction for more than twelve years, but next year it'll be upstaged by the considerably larger 21 Lutetia, which Rosetta will fly by on July 10.

Marc Rayman

Dawn entered the main asteroid belt on November 13. As it ventures ever deeper into this vast collection of material between Mars and Jupiter, it may be tempting to think of the spacecraft constantly dodging asteroids.

Emily Lakdawalla

Trouble has come time and again to JAXA's little Hayabusa asteroid sample return mission, yet the mission's engineers always come up with new and creative ways to solve problems.

Emily Lakdawalla

Rosetta appears to have operated flawlessly as it streaked past Earth for its flyby early this morning. Here are a few more gems from the flyby.

Emily Lakdawalla

Just hours away from its Earth flyby, Rosetta is busily snapping images and gathering other science data.

Emily Lakdawalla

JAXA issued a press release (in Japanese) on November 9 stating that one of Hayabusa's ion thrusters, thruster D, had stopped operating. Hayabusa launched with four ion thrusters, but D was one of only two that are still functioning. So the failure of thruster D is a serious problem.

Emily Lakdawalla

Heads up! ESA's Rosetta spacecraft is approaching for its last flyby of Earth, on Friday, November 13.

Marc Rayman

Dawn has devoted another month to thrusting with its ion propulsion system, ever with its sights set on its rendezvous with Vesta in July 2011.

Emily Lakdawalla

Heads up! ESA's Rosetta comet-chasing mission is going to buzz by Earth again in less than a month.

Marc Rayman

Dawn is celebrating the second anniversary of leaving its home planet by engaging in the same function it has performed most of its time in space: with the utmost patience, it is using its ion propulsion system to gradually modify its orbit around the Sun.

Emily Lakdawalla

For a couple of weeks now, I've been hearing rumors about an upcoming announcement concerning Chandrayaan-1 Moon Mineralogy Mapper (

Emily Lakdawalla

How much water is there on the Moon, and is it in a form that human explorers could use? This part of the story has many more questions and many fewer definite conclusions.

Marc Rayman

As Dawn continues its long solar system journey to match orbits with Vesta and later with Ceres, some readers may note a surprising trend in the statistics for the mission.

Marc Rayman

Today Dawn is 220 million kilometers (137 million miles) from the star at the solar system's center.

Marc Rayman

Dawn's mission continues to go very well, as the spacecraft nears the end of the longest coasting period of its astronomical journey.

Alan Stern

Today, I'm kicking the week off with a look at the unusually intense confluence of far flung planetary exploration that's just around the corner, starting the middle of next year.

Marc Rayman

The upgraded Dawn spacecraft is now traveling in a new direction in its orbit around the Sun.

Marc Rayman

Perhaps what is most noteworthy and satisfying since the last log is not what Dawn did, but rather what it did not do.

Marc Rayman

Dawn swooped close to Mars and then left it behind on a new course, having taken advantage of Mars's gravity.

Emily Lakdawalla

Looks like the Dawn flyby of Mars went well: here' a photo of Mars taken by Dawn near its closest approach to Mars during its February 17 flyby.