Articles

Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.

We love Lucy

Everything you need to know about NASA’s Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids.

Rocky worlds rock

This week we're all about the rocky planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

Supereruptions and psychedelia

The surface of Mars can teach us about its history and, with the right imaging techniques, conjure flashbacks of 60s psychedelia.

The best seat in the solar system

Look at some extraordinary views from space and imagine what you’d see if you had the best seat on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.

Looking forward to looking into deep space

The newest issue of The Planetary Report takes a look at the James Webb Space Telescope and what it will teach us about the cosmos.

The Space Advocate Newsletter, September 2021

It's time to look beyond 2024.

SpaceX Inspiration4 mission: Your questions, answered

SpaceX is preparing to launch the first-ever entirely civilian mission — Inspiration4 — into Earth orbit.

For every world, there is a season

When we explore space we see familiar things: seasons, ice caps, and maybe someday even plants.

Dunes and doppelgangers

What can we learn from patterns in the Martian sands? And what’s that Earth-like planet over there?

Proximity and distance

Looking at planets and moons from near and far, and figuring out how to get all the way out there.

Jaw-Dropping Jupiter

10 years after launching, Juno is still showing us Jupiter’s stunning beauty.

We Love to Buggy

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo mission that introduced Moon buggies to the world, and catch up on this week’s space news.

The Icy Intrigue of Enceladus

Saturn’s icy moon invites further study, and The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 spacecraft celebrates an anniversary.

Blue Origin reusable booster flight four, liftoff

Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic: their space tourism flights explained

Though Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have similar overarching ambitions, there are some stark differences in their approaches to suborbital space tourism.

Seeing Ourselves in Space

When we look at our planet, look for life, or direct a rover to look at itself, we see ourselves in new ways.

Why NASA pays SpaceX and Boeing to fly astronauts to the International Space Station

Commercial crew is a partnership between NASA and private industry to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station and create a new market for humans in space.