Jatan Mehta

Contributing Editor, The Planetary Society

Jatan Mehta is a science writer passionate about exploration of space and humanity’s future in it, and the unique role of our Moon in both. His space blog and lunar exploration newsletter can be found at blog.jatan.space.

Resource Pages Authored by Jatan

The Moon, preserving Earth's origin story

The Moon is the only world besides Earth ever visited by humans. By studying it, scientists can piece together Earth’s origin story.

Venus, Earth's twin sister

Venus may have had oceans and been habitable to life before being transformed into an inhospitable wasteland.

The Sun, our Solar System’s star

Our Sun is an active star, frequently bursting out storms of plasma and radiation into the Solar System.

VIPER, NASA’s Moon resource mapper

NASA is launching the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, in 2025 to map water on the Moon’s south pole.

NASA CLPS Moon landing missions

NASA is returning humans to the Moon later in the decade, but a fleet of agency-supported robotic spacecraft will precede them and pave the way.

EnVision, Europe’s mission to Venus

The European Space Agency (ESA) is launching the EnVision spacecraft to study Venus and its past.

Juice, exploring Jupiter’s icy moons

The European Space Agency (ESA) is launching the Juice spacecraft to study Jupiter and its three largest icy moons — Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

Neptune, planet of wind and ice

Neptune, our outermost planet, is a windy blue world with exotic ice, raging storms, rings, and a moon that could have a subsurface ocean.

Danuri, South Korea’s first Moon mission

The lunar orbiter launched South Korea’s deep space ambitions.

Psyche the spacecraft at Psyche the asteroid

Psyche, exploring a metal world

NASA is launching the Psyche mission to a metal asteroid by the same name in October 2023.

MMX, Japan’s Martian Moons eXploration mission

MMX launches in 2024 to study Mars' moons and return samples from Phobos to Earth in 2029.

VERITAS, NASA’s Venus mapper

NASA will launch the VERITAS spacecraft no earlier than 2031 to study Venus and its past.

Saturn, planet of rings, moons and more to explore

Saturn is the crown jewel of our solar system. It has a stunning set of rings, diverse moons, and so much more to explore.

Asteroids, comets, and other small worlds

These leftover planet-building materials are time capsules that give us a peek into our origins.

Chandrayaan-1, India’s first Moon mission

The orbiter discovered water on the Moon, and kickstarted an ambitious Indian planetary science program.

Lunar Trailblazer, NASA’s Moon water mapper

Advancing our understanding of water across the Moon for exploration and science.

MAVEN, studying how Mars lost its atmosphere

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft, MAVEN, studies how Mars loses its atmosphere to space. The orbiter also relays communications between surface missions and Earth.

Mars Pathfinder, the start of modern Mars exploration

The Pathfinder mission deployed the first-ever wheeled rover on Mars, and technologies developed for it paved the way for future, more sophisticated exploration of the red planet.

ExoMars rover

The European Space Agency and Russian space agency planned to send a joint mission to Mars in September 2022. It has since been suspended after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.