Articles

Bruce Betts

After 3.5 years, 18,000 orbits of the Earth, and 8 million kilometers (5 million miles) traveled, The Planetary Society’s successful LightSail 2 solar sail spacecraft will burn up as it reenters the Earth’s atmosphere in the next few days.

Bruce Betts

An update on The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 mission, which launched in 2015.

Bruce Betts

Brief updates on what the latest Shoemaker NEO grant winners have been working on.

Bruce Betts

We are excited to announce a new Request for Proposals (RFP) for our Science and Technology Empowered by the Public (STEP) Grants.

Bruce Betts

The new STEP Grants program is designed to regularly compete a significant portion of The Planetary Society’s science and technology portfolio.

Bruce Betts

More funds than ever before support the work of asteroid hunters from around the world.

Bruce Betts

Two years after launch, The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft is still solar sailing and paving the way for future missions.

Bruce Betts

We check in our last round of grant winners, who are helping to defend Earth from dangerous asteroids.

Bruce Betts

Bruce Betts and Sarah Al-Ahmed provided a guide to all total solar eclipses through the end of the 2020s, with dates and locations.

Bruce Betts

Your guide to total, partial, and annular eclipses: what causes them, what you'll see, and when the next one will happen.

Bruce Betts

Six proposals are awarded a total of $57,906. The winners come from 4 countries on 3 continents.

Bruce Betts

Our grants fund amateur observers, underfunded professional observers, and observers in developing countries who make vital contributions to NEO research.

Bruce Betts

Bruce Betts reports on LightSail 2’s status and looks to the future of solar sailing.

Bruce Betts

For Astronomy Day, Bruce announces his new book Astronomy for Kids, provides excerpts, and gives some bonus planet observing info.

Bruce Betts

A collection of before and after slider images showing how views of planets in our solar system have changed over the years since NASA was created.

Bruce Betts

The Planetary Society presents a list of Frequent Asteroid Questions (FAQs).

Bruce Betts

Rocket science met planetary science in the California desert when PlanetVac, a new planetary surface sampling technique, was successfully tested on a Xodiac rocket.

Bruce Betts

In 2018, The Planetary Society awarded $59,300 as part of its Gene Shoemaker Near Earth Object (NEO) Grant Program. The grants were made to a group of international researchers to find, track, and characterize potentially hazardous NEOs.

Bruce Betts

Seven very advanced amateur astronomers will help find, track, and characterize near Earth asteroids.

Bruce Betts

The Mars 2020 mission will carry microphones in its EDL package and its SuperCam instrument, which will enable us to finally hear the sounds of Mars. The Planetary Society has been trying to get microphones to Mars for 20 years and is ecstatic that these will fly.