Articles

Andrew Jones

The Chang'e-4 spacecraft will launch on December 7 toward a farside landing, making use of a relay satellite to stay in touch with Earth.

Emily Lakdawalla

Chandrayaan-2, expected to launch in October, will now be launching no earlier than 3 January 2019, with its lander and rover touching down in February.

Luyuan Xu

It took 24 days for Queiqiao to reach an Earth-Moon L2 halo orbit.

Jason Davis

See the world through the eyes of Longjiang-2.

Luyuan Xu

China's fourth lunar mission, Chang’e 4, is expected to begin on May 21 with the launch of a Long March 4C rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in the southwest of China. The launch will carry a spacecraft named Queqiao, which will serve as a communication relay satellite between Earth and the lunar farside.

Jatan Mehta

Take a look at how electronics of spacecraft are built to survive the harshness of space environments.

Emily Lakdawalla

Some of the biggest discoveries we make in planetary science rely on the seemingly simple act of picking up and analyzing pieces of other worlds. When things go awry, scientists and engineers can sometimes squeeze amazing science out of a tough situation.

Emily Lakdawalla

Three launches to the Moon and one each to Mercury and Mars; two arrivals at near-Earth asteroids; and an approach to an encounter with a distant Kuiper belt object are highlights we anticipate in 2018.

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

India plans a return to the Moon with an orbiter, lander, and rover on the Chandrayaan-2 mission.

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

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.

Phil Stooke

How were the Chang'e 5 and 4 landing sites chosen? Space exploration historian Phil Stooke explains.

Andrew Jones

Later this year, China is launching the Change'5 spacecraft to return a sample from the Moon. The mission will pave the way for future ambitions, including crewed trips to the lunar surface.

Phil Stooke

Over nearly 60 years of spacecraft exploration of the Moon, lots of spacecraft have crashed on the lunar surface—some accidental, some intentional. Phil Stooke hunts for their impact sites.

Emily Lakdawalla

What's ahead for our intrepid space explorers in 2017? It'll be the end of Cassini, but not before the mission performs great science close to the rings. OSIRIS-REx will fly by Earth, and Chang'e 5 will launch to the Moon, as a host of other spacecraft continue their ongoing missions.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini is going to make a major change to its orbit, getting much close to Saturn, setting up 20

Bill Dunford

More than seven years after the end of its mission, JAXA has released the entire data set from Kaguya's HDTV cameras.

Emily Lakdawalla

ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter arrives on October 19, and it will deliver the Schiaparelli lander to its brief life on the Martian surface. Juno's headed into its science orbit, MOM has released science data, and New Horizons will finally finish downlinking Pluto flyby data.

Emily Lakdawalla

The month of September begins with an annular solar eclipse visible from much of Africa on September 1. On or after September 8, we'll see OSIRIS-REx launch into a two-year cruise toward a rendezvous with asteroid Bennu. But September will close, sadly, with the end of the wonderful Rosetta mission.