Articles

Casey Dreier

President Trump signed Space Directive #1, formally implementing as policy what Vice President Pence had announced at the first meeting of the National Space Council in October: that NASA will focus its human spaceflight efforts on a return to the Moon, and then onto Mars. What really changed?

Katherine Winchell

It takes years to decide where a Mars rover is going to land. Members of NASA's Mars 2020's camera team describe their participation in the process.

Adam Block

Award-winning astrophotographer Adam Block brings us stunning images of beautifully chaotic scenes across the universe.

Jason Davis

What do the shortest days of the year look like from space?

Emily Lakdawalla

Results from the Juno gravity science experiment presented at last week's American Geophysical Union meeting suggest Jupiter's winds penetrate only to 3000 kilometers deep.

Andrew Jones

China is making steady progress on a proposed mission to bring a piece of Mars back to Earth in the late 2020s.

Emily Lakdawalla

JunoCam may be an outreach instrument, but its superb photos of storms on Jupiter are providing plenty of data for scientists to talk about.

Emily Lakdawalla

At the American Geophysical Union meeting, members of the Juno team showed observations of active volcanism on Jupiter's moon Io.

James Davenport

On December 10, Kepler—NASA’s prized exoplanet discovery telescope—will finally turn back and take a picture of the Earth.

Jason Davis

NASA is about to pick finalists for its next New Frontiers mission. Will Venus make the cut?

A.J.S. Rayl

Opportunity continued the historic winter science campaign inside Perseverance Valley and delivered the goods that confirmed an important discovery in November, and then cruised through winter solstice, driving the mission closer to its 14th anniversary of surface operations coming up in January.

Jason Davis

Will NASA's Space Launch System be ready to launch a Europa mission in 2022?

Jason Davis

And it's only 11 light-years away.

Jason Davis

Asteroid hunters named the first-known interstellar asteroid ʻOumuamua as a nod to its scout-like traits.

Marc Rayman

Building on the successes of its primary mission and its first extended mission, NASA has approved the veteran explorer for a second extended mission.

A.J.S. Rayl

As brutally cold got even colder at Endeavour Crater in October, the depths of winter gripped Opportunity, and ‘life’ on Mars slowed. But the robot field geologist continued to work on through the doldrums of the season.

Emily Lakdawalla

Today's story from the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting looks at one youthful rayed crater on the Moon from many different spacecraft.

Emily Lakdawalla

Google Maps released several new map products that allow you to see the locations of named features on many solar system planets and non-planets, spinning them around in space with your mouse.

Emily Lakdawalla

James Tuttle Keane is increasingly famous (among planetary scientists anyway) for his remarkable illustrated notes from conferences. Here's his work from the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting, illustrating both his own and others' research.

Emily Lakdawalla

Three years ago, on October 19, 2014, comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring passed within 138,000 kilometers of Mars. At the 2017 meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, we heard a progress report on Mars orbiter imaging of the comet's nucleus.