Articles

Jason Davis

The tale of NASA's Super Guppy aircraft, which ferried parts of America's space program to their launch pads.

Ted Stryk

Ted Stryk reminisces on how he was turned on to astronomy.

Emily Lakdawalla

Bill Nye, the Executive Director of the Planetary Society will be at his alma mater, Cornell University, this Saturday, August 27, for the dedication of a remarkable Solar Noon Clock that has been installed on the front face of Rhodes Hall on the Cornell campus.

Pablo Gutierrez-Marques

I have to admit it: three months ago I did not understand why space science is important. This is a pretty bold statement coming from a practicing aerospace engineer, but recent events have corrected this lack of understanding, and I am not embarrassed to correct myself in this blog. But let us not get ahead of the story.

Emily Lakdawalla

I had an amazing opportunity back in April: an invitation to go inside the fabled Spacecraft Assembly Facility at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to see the next Mars rover up close.

Meg Schwamb

On May 5 and 6, I had a run on the WIYN (Wisconsin-Indiana-Yale-NOAO) telescope, a 3.5 m telescope, the second largest telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona.

Emily Lakdawalla

Meteorites hit Earth all the time, but they almost never score direct hits on human-built structures (or humans, for that matter). Once in a while, though, direct hits do happen, and it looks like this recent event in Poland was the real thing.

Bruce Betts

The Planetary Society's Shuttle LIFE experiment is now go for launch on Endeavour's STS-134 mission. I came down to Florida for the loading of our tiny sample tubes into the CREST-1 (Commercial Reusable Experiments for Science & Technology) payload block.

Bill Nye

The Earth is important, and sometimes we need a reminder as to just how fragile it is.

Emily Lakdawalla

I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity today for a face-to-face visit with one of the biggest celebrities in my world: Curiosity, the next Mars rover. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory gave members of the media a chance to suit up in the white coveralls known as

Nick Schneider

I was heading south to Tokyo with Seiko and Ishi, two students from the conference. We were planning a dinner together, maybe catching the nighttime skyline from the top of Tokyo Tower. I dozed off as the train flew silently through the countryside. Next thing I knew, Seiko was shaking me awake saying

Louis D. Friedman

I was very fortunate to be able to meet with Stephen Hawking and Buzz Aldrin over lunch at Hawking's temporary home in Pasadena this week. We got together to discuss views on the future of human space exploration.

Emily Lakdawalla

In a lovely talk, in his uncommonly engaging way, Steve Squyres presents the portrait of him that now hangs in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

Mat Kaplan

The launch has been scrubbed once again due to a critical hydrogen leak detected once fueling had been underway for a while.

Mat Kaplan

A brief musing on the public opinion of the shuttle when it was first unveiled, and now, as it's about to be retired.

Mat Kaplan

Mat Kaplan relays his experiences and thoughts as he makes his way to the Kennedy Space Center to witness the launch of the shuttle Discovery.

Rosaly Lopes

Rosaly Lopes relates her time at a workshop in Piton.

Rosaly Lopes

It so happens that there is a Calderas Workshop going on the same week as DPS and I was invited to talk about planetary calderas. I chose several on Venus, Mars and Io to focus on.

Ryan Anderson

Well, the field trip is over and I am happy to say that I was not eaten by any bears. They seemed much more interested in the huckleberries.

Emily Lakdawalla

It seems like a good time to feature the profiles of women space scientists that have been gracing the pages of Susan Niebur's Women in Planetary Science Blog.