Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Three launches to the Moon and one each to Mercury and Mars; two arrivals at near-Earth asteroids; and an approach to an encounter with a distant Kuiper belt object are highlights we anticipate in 2018.

Jason Davis

Will NASA's Space Launch System be ready to launch a Europa mission in 2022?

Jason Davis

The GMT will characterize Earth-size exoplanets' atmospheres, looking for compounds that indicate the presence of life.

Jason Davis

The Planetary Society has supported SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, practically since our founding in 1980. Learn the past, present, and future of SETI.

Jason Davis

Haumea has a ring! Two telescopes used in the discovery—one in Slovenia, and one in Italy—received funding from The Planetary Society's Shoemaker Near Earth Object (NEO) Grant program, which helps amateur astronomers find, track and characterize near-Earth asteroids.

Jason Wright

One of the reasons SETI is hard is that we don’t know exactly what we are looking for, and part of that difficulty is that we still aren’t sure of who we are. An astronomer and an anthropologist team up to explore how cultural myopia shape what we can find in the cosmos.

Casey Dreier

Vice President Mike Pence kicked off the National Space Council's first meeting today by declaring Americans will return to the Moon. Casey Dreier and Jason Davis analyze this new direction for NASA's human spaceflight program.

Anatoly Zak

A Canadian Space Agency proposal would install a solar sail on the outside of the Deep Space Gateway, a miniature space station in lunar orbit.

Jason Davis

Two of NASA's new astronaut candidates are particularly suited to conduct scientific research on other worlds: Zena Cardman, a geobiologist, and Jessica Watkins, a geologist.

Jason Davis

Last week, NASA revealed an updated design for the Space Launch System, featuring black-and-white checkerboards streaking down each of the vehicle's solid rocket boosters.

Julie Seven Sage

Aspiring astrophysicist Julie Seven Sage reports from the launch of student-designed CubeSat payloads at NASA's Wallops Flight Center.

Jason Davis

Only one spacecraft has ever visited Uranus and Neptune: Voyager 2, in the late 1980s. A new NASA report explores the reasons to go back, and what type of mission might take us there.

Jason Davis

Scientists have found what appears to be a 250-kilometer-wide crater near the Falkland Islands. Is it ground zero for Earth's largest-ever extinction event?

Sridhar Narayanan

The first operational launch of the Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark 3 rocket, or GSLV-MK3, developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), was successfully conducted on Monday.

Sridhar Narayanan

The countdown has begun for the first fully operational flight of the Indian Space Research Organization’s most powerful rocket to date: the Geostationary Launch Vehicle Mark 3, or GSLV-MK3.

Jason Davis

Rocket Lab's Electron, a light-lift launcher for small satellites, is ready to make its debut test flight from a peninsula in New Zealand.

Jason Davis

The Space Launch System and Orion won't fly until 2019, and NASA is sticking with its original plan not to include astronauts for the maiden mission. Here is a timeline of some of the programs' major twists and turns over the years.

David Shortt

In the second and final chapter of our series, we’ll explore what the rocket equation has to say about travel through the solar system, using the example of launching a rocket to Pluto.

David Shortt

Have you ever wanted to learn the fundamental physics behind one of the most basic concepts of rocket science? In part one of our two-part series, we explore the foundations of the famous rocket equation.

Jason Davis

NASA's new heavy lift rocket is currently scheduled to launch the Orion spacecraft on a test flight next year. But all signs are pointing to a probable delay.