Articles

Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.

IKAROS Begins Attitude Control

The IKAROS spacecraft continues to perform its mission well as its team at the Japan Space Exploration Center moves closer to the first fully controlled solar sail flight.

Dawn Journal: Dawn 9.0

A new version of the Dawn spacecraft is continuing the ambitious journey through the asteroid belt to uncharted distant worlds.

Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Spirit Rests on Big Find, Opportunity Finishes Half-Marathon on Way to Endeavour

With winter still freezing the southern hemisphere of Mars, June might have been an uneventful month for your average working robot, but not the Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs). In fact, from the sounds of silence to a major discovery to an injury scare, the rovers' latest trials, tribulations and achievements, have turned the last four weeks into something of an emotional roller-coaster for some members of the MER team.

Saturn's hexagon is not unique

It turns out that Saturn's not the only place that displays geometrical shapes in its atmosphere. Earth does too.

’Elephant skin’ texture in the lunar soil (wide)

Elephant Skin on the Moon

There's a name for that funny hummocky texture to the lunar landscape:

One month, one journal, so many missed space stories!

Or: Emily reads you the table of contents of Icarus.

A discontinuous rille on the Moon (Lunar Orbiter view)

Likely candidate for an un-collapsed lava tube

In February, the Chandrayaan-1 science team had a meeting in Ahmedabad, India, to share their results with each other.

Two moons making waves in the rings

Just a pretty picture post, a dramatic Cassini shot on the outer edge of the A ring captured earlier this month.

Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Spirit Team Announces Major Water Discovery

Mars Exploration Rover Spirit continued to hibernate this month, parked in place near an old volcanic formation called Home Plate. At the same time though she managed to rove back into the planetary exploration spotlight when a group of the mission scientists announced they had found -- in data from an outcrop the rover visited more than four years ago -- evidence for a past watery environment more suitable for life than any other either Spirit or Opportunity have found, a place where near-pure water existed. 1

Is this SMART-1's impact site?

Speaking of spacecraft crashing...

IKAROS' deployable camera captures perfect sail photos and animation!

We've already seen IKAROS' view of its deployed sails from cameras attached to the spacecraft, but, in a brilliant idea, the Japanese built IKAROS with two deployable cameras that could view the thing from a distance.

Amigurumi: How I channeled my adrenaline while watching Hayabusa's return

Covering the events of Hayabusa's return involved a lot of watching and waiting. Rather than go blind staring at my computer and cause carpal tunnel syndrome by excessively clicking the refresh button, I decided to...go blind and develop carpal tunnel syndrome by doing some crocheting.