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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
FINDS Exo-Earths Starts Up: Testing the Prototype
The prototype that Julien constructed in the lab was taken to Lick Observatory, and we had our first-light run with the fiber in July.
Optical SETI's Growing Capabilities
Often, the phrase “next steps” has been known to describe things that don't actually happen. But for The Planetary Society's All-sky Optical SETI, it's different. Here's what's happened in the last year.
Send your name to Venus with Venus Climate Orbiter (PLANET-C), now known as Akatsuki
The Japanese space agency's science missions have an abundance of names. They start out with a programmatic name, like MUSES-A, PLANET-A, etc. -- which might be like calling NEAR
Last Chance for Bargains at The Planetary Society Store
We are preparing to have a brand new online store with new and different merchandise; to that end, we are clearing out EVERY LAST BIT of our old store inventory.
Apophis is less scary than it used to be
Based on analyses of previously unstudied telescopic data, NASA scientists have released new predictions for the path of the 300-meter-diameter asteroid Apophis.
Phobos Grunt including Phobos LIFE Delayed Until 2011
Today, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, decided to delay from 2009 to 2011 the launch of the Phobos Grunt mission to study and return samples from the Martian moon Phobos.
Dust storm update: Skies clearing for Spirit
For a while, Mars was beating Spirit while she was down, throwing a dust storm at the rover where it's bogged up to its hubcaps in fluffy soil When lots of dust is lofted into the sky, the hazard is that when it comes down, it may come down on the rover and its solar panels. But it appears things on Spirit are still pretty clean.
Astropulse: A Fresh Look at the Skies in Search of E.T.
If you were a member of an alien civilization trying to communicate across the immeasurable distances of space, how would you go about it?
Designing the Cassini Tour
Each Titan flyby is not a fork in the road, but rather a Los Angeles style cloverleaf in terms of the dizzying number of possible destinations. So how did our current and future plans for the path of the Cassini spacecraft come to be? That's the question Dave Seal put to me since that's my job -- I am a tour designer.
Canto IV: A Cog in the Wheel, a New Star in the Sky
David Seal talks about his experience working with Kevin Beurle.
SERENDIP Takes a Great Leap Forward
Just when SETI@home is celebrating its 10th anniversary, its older brother, Project SERENDIP, is getting a general makeover.
Ever Plan Ahead? How About Six Years Ahead?
Despite still being more than six years and just over 18 Astronomical Units from the Pluto system, the project team for New Horizons is conducting the second and final portion of our Pluto Encounter Preliminary Design Review (EPDR) tomorrow and the next day.
Grant Winners at the 2009 Planetary Defense Conference
A few days ago I had the honor of announcing the latest winners of The Planetary Society's Gene Shoemaker NEO grants here at the Planetary Defense Conference in Granada.
Fly me to the Moon...
Jim Bell describes his proposal to join the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Cameras science team.
The 2009 Gene Shoemaker NEO Grant Recipients
In 2009, The Planetary Society awarded $18,300 as part of its Gene Shoemaker Near Earth Object (NEO) Grant Program. The grants were made to a group of international researchers to find, track, and characterize potentially hazardous NEOs.
More from the Planetary Defense Conference: Shoemaker Grant Winners
More from the Planetary Defense Conference: Shoemaker Grant Winners
Updates on the 2007 Shoemaker NEO Grant Recipients (27 April 2009)
Our 2007 Shoemaker NEO Grant winners have been extremely busy over the past two years. Take for example Quanzhi Ye of Guangzhou, China: He was only 18 when he received the award but already the principal investigator of the sky survey at the Lulin Observatory in Taiwan.
Solar Sail Update: New Opportunities
At the beginning of this decade, we designed a mission to accomplish this goal. We launched Cosmos 1 in June 2005, but the Volna rocket that was to place the spacecraft in orbit failed, and we were never able to test our solar sail in flight. These days, The Planetary Society is working with colleagues at NASA and at the Russian Space Research Institute to put together a new solar sail mission.