Articles

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

Planetary Society-funded telescopes help find ring around Haumea, a distant dwarf planet

Haumea has a ring! Two telescopes used in the discovery—one in Slovenia, and one in Italy—received funding from The Planetary Society's Shoemaker Near Earth Object (NEO) Grant program, which helps amateur astronomers find, track and characterize near-Earth asteroids.

Twin GRAIL spacecraft preparing for launch

American R&D Policy and the Push for Small Planetary Missions at NASA

Planetary Society Policy Adviser Jason Callahan summarizes his paper he presented at the 2017 International Astronautical Congress in Australia, where he examined NASA's low-cost Discovery program and how federal policies directed at higher education initially bolstered planetary science into a viable field.

Cassini's 'Last Dance': A final portrait at Saturn

Cassini’s Last Dance With Saturn: The Farewell Mosaic

Amateur image processor Ian Regan shares the story of processing Cassini's final images of the ringed planet.

Meet VOX, a proposed mission to uncover the secrets of Venus

Van Kane brings us newly released details of the Venus Origins eXplorer (VOX), one of NASA's 12 New Frontiers mission proposals.

Space Policy & Advocacy Program Quarterly Report - October 2017

As a service to our members and to promote transparency, The Planetary Society's Space Policy and Advocacy team publishes quarterly reports on their activities, actions, priorities, and goals in service of their efforts to promote space science and exploration in Washington, D.C.

The SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array

Doing SETI Better by Understanding Ourselves

One of the reasons SETI is hard is that we don’t know exactly what we are looking for, and part of that difficulty is that we still aren’t sure of who we are. An astronomer and an anthropologist team up to explore how cultural myopia shape what we can find in the cosmos.

We choose to go to the Moon and do the other things

Vice President Mike Pence kicked off the National Space Council's first meeting today by declaring Americans will return to the Moon. Casey Dreier and Jason Davis analyze this new direction for NASA's human spaceflight program.

Dawn Journal: 10 Years in Space

A decade after leaving its first home in the solar system, Dawn is healthy and successful at its current residence around Ceres.

Northern summer global view of Mars from Mars Orbiter Mission

A new year's worth of Mars Orbiter Mission data

India's Mars Orbiter Mission has now completed three years in orbit at Mars, and ISRO celebrated the anniversary by releasing the mission's second-year data to the public. Emily Lakdawalla spent a week downloading and processing data for your enjoyment.

Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Braves Onset of Winter to Picture Perseverance

The Martian winter began to grip Endeavour Crater in September, slowing Opportunity's pace. But she braved the brutal cold in Perseverance Valley and followed her commands to visually document everything in sight.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk updates Mars colonization plans

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk presented an updated version of his Mars colonization plans today, during a widely anticipated talk at the 68th International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia.

Earth flyby tests OSIRIS-REx's cameras

As expected, OSIRIS-REx's Earth flyby on September 22 was a success. The mission is slowly releasing beautiful images of our home worlds taken by its many cameras following the flyby.

Is Mars habitable? With the right technologies, yes

Making Mars habitable will require us to master the conversion of raw Martian materials into resources we can use to survive. Fortunately, Mars has a wealth of usable materials, making it one of the most human-habitable places in the solar system, other than Earth itself.