en-us http://planetary.org/blog/ A guide to interesting stuff going on in space science, space exploration, and space advocacy. 15 Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:51:00 GMT Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:51:00 GMT http://www.planetary.org/_img/rss/logo.jpg 127 111 http://planetary.org/blog/ blog@planetary.org (Emily Ladakawalla) Copyright © 2008 by The Planetary Society. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001632/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001632/ Rosetta contacted Earth on schedule following its flyby of asteroid (2867) Steins at 18:38 UTC today, according to a story on the ESA website. Data downlink hasn't started yet -- the spacecraft is still gathering data as it flies away -- but the on-time contact indicates that Rosetta successfully performed the various maneuvers it was commanded to, so there is every reason to hope that the science timeline was executed as planned. Yay! .... Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:49:22 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001631/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001631/ The rocket firing that Rosetta performed yesterday has targeted the spacecraft to within two kilometers of the planned position, an accuracy that the navigation team deems is good enough to cancel the final opportunity for a trajectory correction this morning. In fact, according to the Rosetta blog, the engineers seem to be almost jubilant over the accuracy of their targeting. Some of you might be asking: if they had the chance to fix that .... Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:21:19 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001630/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001630/ Irene Klotz makes this week's Carnival of Space poetical. And, while I'm posting links, here's some other new stuff on the website. A. J. S. Rayl checked in last weekend with the latest from the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Amir Alexander has posted about Astropulse, a new type of SETI@home search. On Planetary Radio, Mat Kaplan interviews the author of the Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders. And Lou Friedman opines about the .... Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:19:53 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001629/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001629/ There are new Rosetta images of Steins, still a faint speck among the background of stars. Here's an animation:Rosetta approaches SteinsThe Rosetta spacecraft fine-tuned its approach to the asteroid Steins using images from its navigation camera captured during the month prior to the encounter. The four images in this animation were taken daily from August 25 through 29. As the images were focused on Steins, background stars appear to move .... Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:15:40 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001628/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001628/ It's time to catch up with the latest on the Phoenix mission at Mars, now more than a week into its extended mission. As I post this, we're a few hours in to sol 99. When I last checked in, Phoenix had spent a couple of weeks grooming trenches and preparing for sample deliveries. This week, they've delivered one sample to the Wet Chemistry Laboratory, tested out a new delivery method for getting an ice-rich sample into TEGA, and opened another .... Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:22:06 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001627/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001627/ A recording of today's Ustream chat is now available; you can also read the chat log here. .... Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:17:13 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001626/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001626/ As of midnight last night (UTC, so that's about 17 hours ago now) ESA's Rosetta spacecraft has all its science instruments on, getting ready for its first close encounter with an asteroid. The closest approach to 2867 Steins happens at 18:37 UTC on Friday, September 5, at a distance of 800 kilometers. It's still too early for the spacecraft to actually be gathering much in the way of scientific data on the asteroid; currently it's warming up .... Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:16:03 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001625/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001625/ I'll be doing my regularly scheduled video chat this Wednesday at noon my time, 1900 UTC. For those of you who haven't followed these chats from the beginning, a little background: I'm using a service called Ustream that allows you to see my talking head expounding about space topics, connected to a "chat room" in which you and all the other viewers can communicate with each other and me via text-based messages. So I usually speak on topics of .... Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:35:47 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001624/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001624/ It's official: Opportunity is out of Victoria. A news release from JPL stated today that Opportunity has, as of late yesterday (sol 1,634), exited Victoria crater. Opportunity has been inside Victoria since sol 1,293 (September 13, 2007), nearly one year ago. On sol 1,291, Opportunity had performed a "toe dip" into the crater, driving a bit into it and then back out, to make sure it would be able to exit the same way it had entered. So, 341 .... Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:43:12 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001623/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001623/ We're now almost done with sol 93 on Phoenix. As I write, it's 21:45 at its landing site. I last checked in with Phoenix on sol 76, after it had spent two weeks doing a carnival of digging. It's been another two weeks, but there is less news for me to catch up on this time. It's not that Phoenix hasn't been busy, it's just that the work has produced fewer obvious changes to its landing site. For the sol 76 update I had to talk about several .... Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:27:51 GMT