Snapshots from Space

New spots on Uranus

Emily Lakdawalla • August 22, 2012 •

New Hubble photos show that Uranus has both dark and bright spots!

Saturn's still there

Emily Lakdawalla • August 22, 2012 •

A pretty picture of Cassini's current view of Saturn.

August 22, 2012 officially proclaimed "Space Day" in California

Emily Lakdawalla • August 21, 2012

Governor Brown has declared August 22, 2012 "Space Day." I'm not sure what it means, but I love the repeated use of the word "whereas."

Curiosity sol 15 update: Wheel wiggles, arm flexes, and bad news about REMS

Emily Lakdawalla • August 21, 2012 •

Notes from this morning's press conference. Curiosity has successfully steered the corner wheels and deployed and restowed the robotic arm. ChemCam tests went well over the weekend. But one of the two wind speed sensors in REMS appears to have suffered permanent damage during landing.

Highly processed version of Curiosity sol 0 rear hazcam image

The first Curiosity 360-degree panorama including the mountain

Emily Lakdawalla • August 18, 2012 •

Damien Bouic took Curiosity's Hazcam images of Aeolis Mons / Mount Sharp and merged them with a beautiful 360-degree Navcam panorama to give us our first look at what the view will look like once the mission finally gets higher-resolution images that include the mountain's peak.

Curiosity sol 11 update: Decision to drive to "the high thermal inertia unit" and what that means

Emily Lakdawalla • August 17, 2012 •

Some notes from this morning's Curiosity press briefing: the rover will be driving to "Glenelg" to investigate the "high thermal inertia unit." I explain what that means, with psychedelic Odyssey THEMIS images of the landing site.

Some fun with Curiosity MARDI images

Emily Lakdawalla • August 16, 2012 •

Yesterday Curiosity returned a pile of full-resolution descent imager photos to Earth. The full-resolution MARDI images are just as great as we anticipated.

Cosmoquest Astronomy Hour, Wednesday: What's up with Curiosity on Mars, with guest: me!

Emily Lakdawalla • August 15, 2012 •

I'm hosting this week's Cosmoquest Astronomy Hour, and rather than having a special guest I'll be speaking myself about what's going on with Curiosity, and will leave lots of time to answer people's questions. Join me at 1600 PDT / 2300 UTC at cosmoquest.org/hangouts.

Curiosity sol 9 update

Emily Lakdawalla • August 15, 2012 •

An update on Curiosity's status as of sol 9, and a look ahead to the next month or two of commissioning activities.

Video, sound, and timeline of Curiosity's descent

Emily Lakdawalla • August 14, 2012 •

A fantastic video produced by Brian Lynch combines the thumbnail images from Curiosity's Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) with the audio from the control room during landing night and a detailed timeline from spaceflight101.com.

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