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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Mars Express animation of Phobos' shadow transiting Mars
For the first time ever, Mars Express' Visual Monitoring Camera has imaged the shadow of Mars' moon Phobos crossing the surface of Mars.
A pretty picture of Concepcion crater
It looks like the rover team thinks Concepcion is pretty enough (in both aesthetic and a scientific senses) to be worthy of the full-color Pancam panorama treatment; color frames started arriving on Earth over the weekend.
Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Rovers Pass 6-Year Milestone as Spirit Halts Extrication to Winter at Troy, Opportunity Cruises to Concepcion Crater
Five and a half years after they were supposed to be history, the Mars Exploration Rovers celebrated their sixth Earth year on the Red Planet with Opportunity pulling up to a fresh, new crater on the road to Endeavour, and Spirit working on repositioning itself to settle in for the coming Martian winter, and perhaps the rest of its mission.
Opportunity's thousand-year-old crater
Since leaving Marquette Island on sol 2,122, Opportunity has been barreling southward on her journey toward Endeavour crater. On her horizon for the last several sols has been a very small but very fresh looking crater named Concepción.
Cassini Aegaeon and Prometheus awesomeness
There were many, many treats waiting on the Cassini raw images website this morning. Yesterday, Cassini traversed the G ring, taking photos all the way.
Awesome New Mars Flyovers
Check out these awesome flyovers of Mars, generated by Doug Ellison of UnmannedSpaceflight!
NASA decides Spirit is henceforth to be a lander
There was a press briefing today that announced the official end of efforts to extricate Spirit from her sand trap at Troy. Instead, the rover drivers will now focus on improving the chances that Spirit will survive the coming winter so that she can carry on doing science once the power situation improves in the spring.
Brief rover update: "We do not believe [Spirit] is extractable."
There's a press briefing going on right now that marks today, January 26, 2010, more than six years after she landed, the day that NASA decided that Spirit's roving days were over.
WISE bags its first near-Earth object, 2010 AB78
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) just took its lens cap off on December 29, and posted its
Your chance to shoot your own high-resolution pictures of Mars
The HiRISE public suggestion tool, called HiWish, is a Web site that allows you to log in and select a spot on Mars as a suggestion for where the HiRISE instrument should take an image.
Report #2 from the New Horizons Science Team Meeting
The second report by Ted Stryk from the New Horizons science team meeting, focusing on the search for Kuiper belt object (KBO) targets.
Figuring out the shape of Mars (and other places)
An amateur named Bernhard Braun (
Report #1 from the New Horizons Science Team Meeting
The New Horizons science team is meeting this week. Ted Stryk was invited to attend the meeting, and he sent the following notes from the first day.
Buttoning up the Mars Orbiter Camera science investigation
The science team for Mars Orbiter Camera, or
Highlights from the January 1, 2010 Cassini imaging data release
The January 1, 2010 Cassini imaging data release includes everything acquired by Cassini from January 1 to March 30, 2009 in all its high-quality glory.
ESA mission analyst suggests 2010 AL30 might be Venus Express rocket
2010 AL30 zipped past us harmlessly about five hours ago. Because of its one-year orbital period, many people speculated it might be a manmade object, but 2010 AL30 might, in fact, be artificial.
Goldstone detects "STRONG" radar echoes from 2010 AL30
Radio scientist Lance Benner posted to the Minor Planets Mailing list this evening the following message:
Odyssey's going to start listening for Phoenix
It's been the second most popular question I get from readers: