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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
One Day in the Solar System
Dispatches from five different worlds--all sent by robotic spacecraft on the same day.
More Evidence for a Habitable Mars from EGU 2013
NASA's Curiosity rover has acquired further evidence that Mars's atmosphere was once dense enough to support liquid water on the surface.
LPSC 2013: Seeing in Permanent Shadow
The case for water ice hidden in permanently shadowed regions at the north pole of the planet Mercury received another boost recently. On Wednesday March 20, 2013 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Nancy Chabot presented the very first visible-light images of what is in the shadows of these polar craters.
Book Review: Cosmochemistry, by Harry McSween and Gary Huss
This very accessible textbook begins at the beginning, explaining how all the things in the solar system were made from star stuff.
Ice Cap to Ice Cap with Mars Odyssey
Explore the mysterious Martian landscape with the workhorse of the Solar System, Mars Odyssey.
Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Hunkers Down for Solar Conjunction, Final Science on Matijevic Hill
As the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission trekked further into its tenth year of exploring the Red Planet, Opportunity spent the month of March finishing up its science investigations on Matijevic Hill.
Dawn Journal: Staying warm en route to Ceres
Marc Rayman's latest Dawn journal explains the temperature adjustments engineers make to save power and keep the spacecraft warm.
Curiosity update, sol 227: Some sharpshooting and a dusty deck
Curiosity is back to science operations, though the activities are limited in scope by the fact that conjunction is fast approaching. Here's a couple of neat images from sol 227.
Field Report From Mars: Sols 3237-3262 - March 4–29, 2013
Flash memory or computer problems oddly occurred on both Curiosity and Opportunity around Feb 27. One possibility is that a large solar flare resulted in radiation at Mars sufficient to temporarily corrupt the memory on both rovers.
LPSC 2013: watery Martian minerals
Some interesting results from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference on clay minerals on Mars and what they might mean about ancient water.
Planetary Society Weekly Hangout: Reports from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
On Thursday at noon PDT / 1900 UTC I'll report on some of my favorite findings from LPSC, and answer your questions about the latest planetary science.
LPSC 2013: License to Chill (or, the solar system's icy moons)
Reports from the March 19 session at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference covering eight icy moons in the outer solar system: Ganymede, Europa, Dione, Rhea, Mimas, Tethys, Enceladus, and Miranda.
ALMA Adventure--Complete Interviews With Planetary Radio Guests
The extended, mostly unedited recordings of my conversations with many of the people I spoke to at the ALMA Observatory in Chile. Also, the full English translation of Chilean President Sebastian Pinera's speech.
LPSC 2013: The Smaller They Are, The Better They Shake
Really cool movies from Jim Richardson propose to explain how the same physics of impact cratering can produce such differently-appearing surfaces as those of the Moon, large asteroids like Eros, and teeny ones like Itokawa.
A Different Angle on Mars
A new slant on Martian landscapes from Mars Global Surveyor.
LPSC 2013: Do we have a meteorite from Mercury?
Before yesterday, my answer to this question would be
LPSC 2013: Sedimentary stratigraphy with Curiosity and Opportunity
A mind-boggling quantity of information is being presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. In my first report from the meeting, I try to make sense of the Curiosity and Opportunity sessions.
Messages of Wonder
Some lovely, rarely-seen images from the MESSENGER mission.
Planetary Society Weekly Hangout: Being WISE about asteroids, comets, and brown dwarfs with Amy Mainzer
This week I'll be talking with NEOWISE principal investigator Amy Mainzer about moving objects that the WISE mission has spotted both inside and outside our solar system.
Comet PANSTARRS from the other side of the Sun!
Comet PANSTARRS is delighting northern hemisphere viewers right now. But it's also big, bright, and beautiful to the STEREO spacecraft.



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