Articles

Van Kane

Roscosmos has ambitious planetary exploration plans in the coming decades, including a series of solo lunar missions and joint missions to Mars with the European Space Agency.

Emily Lakdawalla

Earth's polar vortex has been in the American news all week. But we're not the only planet that has one; basically every world that has an atmosphere has a polar vortex. Here are lots of pretty pictures and animations of polar vortices.

Emily Lakdawalla

A baby Moon and aging Venus crescents are positioned close in the sky today, and lots of people are taking beautiful photos.

Casey Dreier

Humans face the consequences of our own knowledge about the cosmos in this latest episode recap and analysis of Carl Sagan's classic series.

Van Kane

The European Space Agency will announce two major science missions this November, one of which is likely to be devoted to solar system exploration.

Emily Lakdawalla

What Venus Express' Visual Monitoring Camera images of Venus have taught us about the motions of Venus' atmosphere.

Bill Dunford

Beautiful maps of a mysterious place.

Jim Bell

I'm absolutely floored when I stop to think that our beautiful blue ocean is only one of perhaps a half dozen or more oceans on other worlds in our solar system, and only one of probably millions (or more) oceans on other Earth-like planets in our galaxy. Oceans abound!

Bill Dunford

Dispatches from five different worlds--all sent by robotic spacecraft on the same day.

Bill Dunford

Some lovely, rarely-seen images from the MESSENGER mission.

Emily Lakdawalla

In which I dive into the Magellan radar data set and come up with some images of an unusual and possibly unique solar system terrain: tessera.

Emily Lakdawalla

Tuesday morning at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting featured talks on the surface composition and landforms on Titan, including lakes and

Emily Lakdawalla

We're still working on migrating content from the old to the new website. This week, that means I am looking, one by one, through some great amateur-processed space images.

Mat Kaplan

Talk about changing climates on this world and others brought 600 people to the Boulder Theater.

Jim Bell

Unless you are lucky and healthy enough to live for another 105 years, tomorrow will be your last chance to see a Venus transit from the surface of the Earth. But this need not be the last transit of Venus that you will ever see.

David Shortt

The upcoming rare transit of Venus is one step in a long dance among Earth, Venus and the Sun. Transits of Venus follow a peculiar pattern—two transits 8 years apart, then 105.5 years with no transits, then two transits 8 years apart, then 121.5 years with no transits, for a total cycle of 243 years—and thereby hangs a tale.

Emily Lakdawalla

Each Magellan images of Venus seems to be a work of abstract art.

Emily Lakdawalla

At the end of last week, a rather sensational article appeared in both the Russian- and English-language sites of the Russian news agency, RIA Novosti.

Ted Stryk

During the afternoon poster session at the Division of Planetary Sciences / European Planetary Science Congress meeting, I had a long talk with Ludmila Zasova (IKI) about Russia's Venera-D mission to Venus.

Emily Lakdawalla

I'm preparing a talk for the Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show here in Pasadena on Sunday afternoon at 1:45. I have spent the morning putting together a slide that I have long wanted to have for presentations.