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Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
One-Year ISS Mission Preview: 28 Experiments, 4 Expeditions and 2 Crew Members
This Friday, astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will embark for a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station.
Meet NASA's Winning Asteroid Redirect Spacecraft, and the Asteroid It May Visit
NASA has decided to pluck a small boulder off a large asteroid, instead of bagging an entire asteroid outright, the agency announced Wednesday.
LPSC 2015: MESSENGER's low-altitude campaign at Mercury
At last week's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, the MESSENGER team held a press briefing to share results from the recent few months of incredibly low-altitude flight over Mercury's surface. The mission will last only about five weeks more.
Prometheus, Pandora, and the braided F ring in motion
Cassini recently took a long, high-resolution movie of the F ring, catching a view of its ringlets, clumps, and streamers, and two potato-shaped moons, Prometheus and Pandora.
Desert Moon, Narrated by Former Astronaut Mark Kelly, Now Available Online
Desert Moon, a 35-minute documentary that tells the story of Dr. Gerard Kuiper and the dawn of planetary science, is now available online.
Mars Academy
A new project—
Announcing: Planetary TV!
Planetary Society Media Producer Merc Boyan presents our new video resource.
The Mapping of Pluto Begins Today
When New Horizons flies past Pluto in July, we will see a new, alien landscape in stark detail. At that point, we will have a lot to talk about. The only way we can talk about it is if those features, whatever they turn out to be, have names.
Report: NASA May Be Hard-Pressed to Launch SLS by November 2018
A report released by NASA’s Office of Inspector General warns that the agency may be hard-pressed to have its Kennedy Space Center launch facilities ready by November 2018.
LPSC 2015: "Bloggers, please do not blog about this talk."
One presenter at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference asked the audience not to blog about his talk because of the embargo policy of Science and Nature. I show how this results from an incorrect interpretation of those policies. TL;DR: media reports on conference presentations do not violate Science and Nature embargo policies. Let people Tweet!
Launch Pad Animals, Ranked
A semi-authoritative ranking of creatures that co-inhabit rocket launch sites around the world.
LPSC 2015: First results from Dawn at Ceres: provisional place names and possible plumes
Three talks on Tuesday at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference concerned the first results from Dawn at Ceres. Chris Russell showed a map of
Slides from the LPSC 2015 Session on the Community Response to NASA's Budget Request
The Planetary Society helped organize a community response to the latest NASA budget at the 2015 meeting of the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
LPSC 2015: Philae at comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko
In my first post from the 2015 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, I discuss the latest work on Philae images, and some cometary polymers.
How Do We Know When We Have Collected a Sample of Bennu?
A huge amount of effort goes into deciding where to try to collect a sample on Bennu. There are roughly nine months to survey, map and model the asteroid to help make this decision.
LightSail Featured on CBS Evening News
The Planetary Society's LightSail spacecraft made an appearance on national television Monday night during a two-minute segment by CBS Evening News.
Is the Opportunity Rover a Mission 'Whose Time Has Passed'?
The NASA Administrator declared that the Opportunity rover is a mission 'whose time has passed' and will be defunded next year. Will Congress act to save it?
If it's March, it must be LPSC
Next week is the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), and Emily Lakdawalla will be attending to tweet and blog about news from Rosetta; Curiosity; MESSENGER; GRAIL; Chang'e 3; Dawn; New Horizons; Cassini; and more.
Adding Churyumov-Gerasimenko to my scale comparison of comets and asteroids
Having found a color photo of the comet, I finally added Churyumov-Gerasimenko to my scale comparison of comets and asteroids visited by spacecraft.
An internal ocean on Ganymede: Hooray for consistency with previous results!
A newly published paper confirms a subsurface ocean at Ganymede. An ocean there was already suspected from its magnetic field and predicted by geophysics; new Hubble data confirms it, and even says it is in the same place we thought it was before. Such consistency is rare enough in planetary science to be worth celebration.