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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Solar System History 101
How did our solar system come to be? Why are the planets, asteroids, comets, and other small worlds where they are now?
Jupiter and Saturn Great Conjunction Viewing Guide
There's still time to get outside and see Jupiter and Saturn together in the evening sky.
Atmospheres that intrigue, protect, and obscure
Catch up on the week’s space news and consider planetary atmospheres from a few thought-provoking perspectives.
Jupiter dazzles and Neptune beckons
Feast your eyes on these images from space, catch up on the latest in exploration news, and get the lowdown on what’s up in the night sky.
What’s up (and down) in space?
Wrap your head around orientations in space, and learn the latest in space exploration news.
Jupiter from near and far, and two humans return to Earth
This week, learn about the conditions of the early solar system and get ready for next week’s meteor shower, plus more.
The Next 10 Years
Six scientists share the major planetary science discoveries of the past decade, and the questions that will drive the next 10 years of solar system exploration.
What the Shoemaker-Levy 9 Impact Taught Us
Twenty-five years ago, multiple fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter, changing the face of the planet and the course of planetary science.
A new look at Europa, with old data
Ted Stryk shows us a new color, near-global view of Europa made from Galileo spacecraft data captured in 1996.
The Making of Life
Michael L. Wong asks how our understanding of the origin of life on Earth informs our search for it elsewhere.
How I created a Jupiter rotation video using Hubble data
Judy Schmidt shares the technique she used to make a beautiful new animation of Jupiter.
Looking at Io's Volcanoes Since Galileo
It’s been almost 17 years since NASA's Galileo spacecraft took meaningful data of Jupiter’s volcanic moon.
Here are some recent postcards from Jupiter
Let's check in on NASA's Juno spacecraft, which completed its 14th close flyby of Jupiter last month.
Eleven perijoves
Seán Doran has made a cool visual index to the images that JunoCam took during Juno's first 12 closest approaches to Jupiter.
Juno meets Cassini: A new merged global map of Jupiter
The Juno spacecraft that is currently orbiting Jupiter has obtained the first good images of Jupiter's polar regions. I am presenting here a combined global map of Jupiter, made from a Cassini map I made for the equatorial and temperate regions and polar maps made from the Juno JunoCam and JIRAM polar images.
Juno's 12th perijove in lifelike color
With the help of some preprocessing of JunoCam images by Mattias Malmer, Don Davis shows us how Jupiter might have looked on April 1, 2018, if we'd been aboard Juno.
Space grade electronics: How NASA’s Juno survives near Jupiter
Take a look at how electronics of spacecraft are built to survive the harshness of space environments.
Diving into Juno JIRAM data archives
The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument can obtain images in two infrared bands. JIRAM can see the nightside of Jupiter (including the winter pole) and takes spectacular animations.
#LPSC2018: Groovy Galilean satellites
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.
How the Falcon Heavy could revolutionize exploration of the ocean worlds
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy is not just for big payloads, it can also throw light things into space very fast. And that has significant implications for the exploration of distant destinations in our outer solar system—particularly the ocean moons of the giant planets.
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