What We Do

The Planetary Society creates ways for the public to have active roles in space exploration. Engaging citizen scientists Through our projects and citizen science activities, we aim to foster a scientifically literate populace, one in which every citizen knows and appreciates other worlds as well as this one. We develop innovative technologies, like the first solar sail spacecraft, we fund astronomers hunting for hazardous asteroids and planets orbiting other stars, we support radio and optical searches for extraterrestrial life, and we influence decision makers, ensuring the future of space exploration.

Featured Projects

Finds Exo-Earths

The Planetary Society had teamed up with planet hunters Debra Fischer of Yale University and Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley to help with the quest to find other "Earths," other worlds like our own, elsewhere in our galaxy.

Pioneer Anomaly

Something strange was happening in the outer reaches of our solar system. The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft were not where they were supposed to be. The mystery of the Pioneer Anomaly has been solved The recovery of Doppler and telemetry data and the entire effort in thermal analysis would not have happened without the Planetary Society.

Shoemaker Near-Earth Object Grant Program

Planetary Society's Shoemaker Grant program supports astronomers following up potentially hazardous asteroids.

Laser Bees

What do we do if an asteroid is found to be on a collision course with Earth? At this point, the answer is not clear, so The Planetary Society has partnered with researchers to discover ways to protect Earth when we one-day find a dangerous space rock.

SETI

At the core of our explorations is the quest to know if life exists beyond Earth. The Planetary Society is a leader in the search for life on other worlds, whether intelligent or microbial. Our active projects: SETI Optical Telescope - Looking for laser signals beamed across the vastness of space. SETI Radio Searches - Huge radio dishes sift through nature's random noise for beacons from other civilizations.

Mars Climate Sounder

The Planetary Society is an education outreach partner on Mars Climate Sounder and is proud to be a part of this next phase of Mars exploration.

LIFE Project

The Planetary Society developed the two-phase LIFE – Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment – to investigate the transpermia hypothesis, the idea that a living organism might survive a journey through space to Earth inside a meteorite.

Microrovers

NASA and other countries have studied large rovers designed to carry humans, medium-sized robotic rovers like those used now on Mars, and even a low-gravity "nano?rover," but there is a largely unstudied niche of microrovers, which we loosely define as rovers with masses of one to a few kilograms. Even less studied is how they might work with humans on the Moon, Mars, or other bodies.

Past Projects

We have accomplished a lot in the past 30-plus years. Don't worry, we haven't forgotten about and of the exciting space exploration projects made possible by the generous support of you -- our members and supporters. It is just taking us awhile to migrate all of that great information from old website to the new one.