Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

The MESSENGER team announced today that they accomplished the penultimate trajectory correction maneuver necessary to line the spacecraft up for its second gravity-assist flyby of Venus.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini has just begun its 44th orbit of Saturn (called Rev 43), and is starting it off with lots of views of famously two-faced Iapetus.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini got a nice

Emily Lakdawalla

According to a press release issued this morning by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the enormous solar flare that erupted on December 5 and 6 last year was accompanied by an intense radio burst that caused large numbers of Global Positioning System recivers to stop tracking the signal from the orbiting GPS satellites.

Emily Lakdawalla

This image is beautiful for many reasons. It was captured by the MVIC imaging spectrometer, part of the Ralph instrument, on New Horizons, as it left the Jupiter system on March 2, 2007.

Emily Lakdawalla

The last one of New Horizons imaging instruments has finally checked in with a lovely image from the Jupiter flyby

Emily Lakdawalla

What should arrive in my inbox today but a press release from the Cassini RPWS and magnetometer teams saying, in part,

Emily Lakdawalla

The Tvashtar eruption continues to amaze. All this time between Galileo and New Horizons, Io's volcanoes have probably continually produced spectacular eruptions like these.

Emily Lakdawalla

Since late January Cassini has been acquiring several sets of images that show all of Saturn's globe and ring system at once from perspectives well above and below the ring plane.

Emily Lakdawalla

OK, I had planned to confine my posts this week to Rosetta and New Horizons, but I could not let these images sit on my computer until next week.

Emily Lakdawalla

According to a press release issued minutes ago, New Horizons has successfully completed its close flyby of Jupiter.

Emily Lakdawalla

There were two new pictures posted on the New Horizons Science Operations Center website this morning, of Io, and if you enhance the images a bit, there are two clear volcanic plumes visible on the limb -- Tvashtar and Prometheus are active!

Emily Lakdawalla

This amazing view was captured by the CIVA camera on Rosetta's Philae lander just four minutes before its closest approach to Mars on February 25, 2007. The spacecraft was only 1,000 kilometers above the planet.

Emily Lakdawalla

Iapetus is one of the many fascinating bodies in the Saturn system.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's easy to forget that Mars is another such world with cloudy weather and seasonally varying climate. This lovely image release from the CRISM instrument on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter brings that point home.

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla

I've just posted a very detailed timeline of New Horizons' encounter with Jupiter -- take a look!

Emily Lakdawalla

I wrote recently about a set of images of Saturn acquired by Cassini from a unique vantage point, well above the planet, looking down on the rings. Someone has taken up the challenge of assembling the 36 different images into a single mosaic, in color, and it is as lovely as I'd hoped.

Emily Lakdawalla

A year after its launch on January 19, 2006, New Horizons is fast closing in on Jupiter, the first target on its near decade-long journey. On February 28 the spacecraft will approach to within 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) of Jupiter before speeding along on to its way to the edge of the solar system.