Articles

The Downlink

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

The Downlink

Venus is an intimidating destination for spacecraft, and we’re pretty sure Earth hasn’t yet been a destination for aliens.

Ian Regan

Last month marked the 40th anniversary of the historic Voyager 1 encounter with Jupiter in 1979.

Emily Lakdawalla

This week it seems fitting to feature a portrait of the Galilean moons by Galileo.

Harriet Brettle

The Jovian system is a busy place. The Groovy Galilean Satellites session at last week's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) covered analysis of past mission data, testable hypotheses for future missions, and discussion of the use of ground-based data.

Emily Lakdawalla

Google Maps released several new map products that allow you to see the locations of named features on many solar system planets and non-planets, spinning them around in space with your mouse.

Candice Hansen

It is not easy to observe Jupiter’s moons as more than points of light with Juno, because Juno will never get very close to any of the moons, but as its orbit shifts there will be opportunities to collect data on some of the moons.

Emily Lakdawalla

For a second time, NASA has placed a spacecraft into orbit at Jupiter. The spacecraft operated exactly according to plan, and Juno successfully entered orbit today, July 5, 2016, UTC

Emily Lakdawalla

We're now just about 12 hours away from Juno's Jupiter orbit insertion. As anticipation ramps up, NASA has released this sneak peek at JunoCam's approach movie, made of views of Jupiter and its largest moons shot during the final approach, up until about five days ago.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Voyager data set is a gift to Earth that keeps on giving. This week, I've seen three great new images processed from this old data set.

Jessica Noviello

This year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference devoted two oral presentation sessions to questions related to icy satellites in our solar system. Jessica Noviello reports back from the conference.

Emily Lakdawalla

A newly published paper confirms a subsurface ocean at Ganymede. An ocean there was already suspected from its magnetic field and predicted by geophysics; new Hubble data confirms it, and even says it is in the same place we thought it was before. Such consistency is rare enough in planetary science to be worth celebration.

Bill Dunford

More examples of imperfect--but tantalizing--images from deep space.

Van Kane

Europe's JUICE spacecraft will provide us with a detailed regional study of this icy moon of Jupiter.

Emily Lakdawalla

A few presentation slides with pretty pictures, sized to scale, of the large moons of the solar system.

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!

Emily Lakdawalla

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.

Emily Lakdawalla

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.

Van Kane

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced the list of instruments selected for its JUICE mission to explore the Jovian system for three years starting in the 2030 following a 2022 launch.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's amateur astronomers, not professionals, who are shouldering the burden of constant monitoring of the weather on Jupiter and Saturn. What's going on these days in the outer solar system?