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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
New Horizons spots Pluto!
Yesterday the New Horizons team released a flicker animation showing the spacecraft's first sight of Pluto, using the LORRI long-range imaging instrument.
New names for Enceladus' features
The IAU has just approved new names for 35 craters, dorsa, fossae, and sulci on the surface of Enceladus, based upon Cassini's high-resolution mapping of the little moon. What are dorsa, fossae, and sulci, you might ask?
New Horizons is locked on target for its Jupiter encounter
Alan Stern just posted a detailed update on the status of New Horizons in his PI's Perspective blog on the mission website.
Cassini's view from the backside of Saturn
Over time, Cassini's orbit apoapsis—the point on the orbit that is farthest from Saturn—has been shifting slowly toward Saturn's night side. Lately, this point of view has resulted in some truly lovely photos of the planet.
They released the entire Cassini RADAR swath across Xanadu!
Following immediately on the heels of the release of the
Cassini's T7 RADAR view of southern Titan; northern swath coming soon
Cassini's T7 flyby of Titan occurred on September 7, 2005. They've now released the full swath of RADAR image data to the Planetary Data System; here it is for your enjoyment.
New Horizons tracks an asteroid
New Horizons is spending the summer traversing the asteroid belt. I haven't written a lot about New Horizons lately because the mission has been going so uneventfully well. But now I've got something to write about: data!!
The official publication on the second Titan RADAR swath is out
Today Nature published an article titled
Cassini RADAR: Another Flyby, Another Completely Different View of Titan
OK, I finally got a story written about the latest and greatest of the Cassini RADAR data based upon a conversation I had with with Ralph Lorenz late last week.
Cassini RADAR images of the surface of Titan
Since the last Titan flyby on April 30, the Cassini RADAR team has been releasing quite a large number of pieces of the swath to the Web.
A play-by-play of the Cassini scare on Mayday
Last week's Cassini Significant Events Report included a detailed play-by-play of the frightening morning of Mayday. I thought it was a very interesting read on how a mission deals with an
OPAG, Day 1: Cassini and Juno status
The Outer Planets Assessment Group opened with the status of two of the three actual outer planets missions, Cassini and Juno.
OPAG, Day 1: Getting to Europa
Next up at the Outer Planets Assessment Group meeting was an overview of the plans for future Europa missions.
How much data has Cassini returned to Earth?
Since January 1, 2004—the beginning of the Saturn phase of the mission—Cassini has radioed almost 139 Gigabytes of science data to Earth.
New Horizons passes farther from the Sun than Mars today!
Today is the day that New Horizons passes Mars' orbit (not that Mars is anywhere close to New Horizons right now).
Updated Cassini tour table
Cassini planner Dave Seal gave me a newly updated list of times and dates for Cassini's ongoing tour of the Saturn system, so I went through and compared my table to his and made updates to flyby distances.
LPSC: Wednesday afternoon: Cassini at Enceladus
So after those two rover talks I skipped over to the other large room to listen to what the Cassini science teams had to say about Enceladus.
LPSC, Wednesday morning: Titan
This morning at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference began with Titan, and then later in the morning I had to choose between skipping Titan and going over to rover sessions, or staying with Titan. I elected to stay with Titan.
The hubbub about Enceladus
I just posted a very brief story about all of the press releases that have been whizzing around today about the possibility of liquid water on Enceladus.
Cassini is wrapping up another Titan flyby
This one is