Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Saturn is surrounded by a crowded family of rings and moons, and two of those moons -- Epimetheus and Janus -- orbit Saturn so close together that it seems as though their different orbital speeds should make them crash into each other.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's in space, of course, and has a very, very long way to go to Pluto (nearly 50 billion kilometers). But it's finally more than 1 Astronomical Unit from the Sun.

Emily Lakdawalla

I received a lot of email over the weekend about New Horizons. Many of them were expressing concern about how little news there has been since launch. Have no fear.

Emily Lakdawalla

So the Stardust press conference is still going on on NASA TV, but I am now turning to the Internet to monitor the status of New Horizons' third attempted launch day.

Emily Lakdawalla

I am updating this as I take notes from the press conference.

John Spencer

We just got back from the real post-launch party, following two non-post-launch parties on the last two evenings. This was more like it.

Emily Lakdawalla

I was looking at that table of launch times for New Horizons and realized that the table included another valuable column of data that I hadn't noticed before: it tells you what year New Horizons will arrive, for each of the possible launch dates.

Emily Lakdawalla

Well, it was a nail-biting morning and too bad that New Horizons didn't go but these things happen pretty frequently.

John Spencer

Oh well, the Sun sets on an earthbound New Horizons at least one more time. The first day's launch attempt was a strange experience in retrospect.

John Spencer

New Horizons just experienced what we hope will be its last ever sunset on Earth. There will be three more sunsets to come.

John Spencer

Another quick post from the Cape. Yesterday was our final pre-launch meeting of the Science Team.

John Spencer

We're at the Cape! More properly, we're at Cocoa Beach just down the coast, having flown in from Denver today.

Emily Lakdawalla

There's a new

John Spencer

This is probably my last missive before Jane and I leave for the Cape on Friday in preparation for the launch.

Emily Lakdawalla

Over the weekend, New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern posted a new

Emily Lakdawalla

I'll just make this an

John Spencer

I'm at home on a Sunday morning, five days before leaving for the Cape (assuming the current launch schedule, with the first launch opportunity on January 17th, continues to hold).

John Spencer

I've been sifting through the data I obtained last week on the lightcurve of binary Kuiper Belt object 1998 SM165 during my three nights on the Lowell Observatory 72

Emily Lakdawalla

It's been a while since I posted some Cassini pictures here just because they were pretty.

Emily Lakdawalla

I am working my way steadily through the seven Huygens papers that were released by Nature magazine Wednesday on their