Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

I just posted today's installment of Planetary Radio, in which Mat Kaplan gets an update on New Horizons from Principal Investigator Alan Stern-- check it out!

Emily Lakdawalla

Another thing I've been trying to catch up on is the daily imaging activities of Cassini, but that, too, has been tough because Cassini has been taking so dang many pictures!

Emily Lakdawalla

Saturn is surrounded by a crowded family of rings and moons, and two of those moons -- Epimetheus and Janus -- orbit Saturn so close together that it seems as though their different orbital speeds should make them crash into each other.

Emily Lakdawalla

I've just resurrected a feature on the site that has been lost since our redesign: the

Emily Lakdawalla

Read that title aloud. Yes, the last minute of 2005 is actually 61 seconds long.

Emily Lakdawalla

There was a big news splash about two articles that appeared in Nature about Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's landing site. The articles suggest two theories for the formation of the layered sulfur-rich deposits at Meridiani Planum that do not involve standing liquid water.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's been a while since I posted some Cassini pictures here just because they were pretty.

Emily Lakdawalla

I am working my way steadily through the seven Huygens papers that were released by Nature magazine Wednesday on their

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily tackles this morning's ESA press conference about Huygens.

Emily Lakdawalla

Remember how Hayabusa was virtually still for 30 minutes? JAXA is now saying that Hayabusa actually touched down -- and more than that, they may even have a sample.

Emily Lakdawalla

A fun NASA explainer just crossed my email inbox and I thought I'd share it.

Emily Lakdawalla

Hayabusa reached an altitude of about 560 meters above Hayabusa at 17:30 UTC. And at 18:00 UTC they are at 500 meters. This is still farther above the asteroid than the asteroid is big...there is still a long way to go before Hayabusa touches down...

Emily Lakdawalla

In a further update on Hayabusa's status, we have been contacted by Kazuya Yoshida of the Space Robotics Laboratory at Tohuku University. Yoshida reports that the touchdown is now planned to take place

Emily Lakdawalla

There has been a delay of just about a day in JAXA's plans for landing Hayabusa on Itokawa.

Emily Lakdawalla

These photos pretty much speak for themselves. They are amazing. Hayabusa saw its own shadow on Itokawa, and took a photo of the released target marker.

Emily Lakdawalla

While I was at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting in Cambridge in September I had a chance to chat with David Atkinson, who's a member of the Doppler Wind Experiment team on Huygens. They and the other instrument teams have been plugging away at analyzing their data.

Amir Alexander

Almost since it was founded in 1980, The Planetary Society has been there for the search for other worlds.

Emily Lakdawalla

I've just posted a very brief update on the upcoming Titan flyby, which will be the first to include RADAR imaging across the Huygens landing site.

Emily Lakdawalla

Back in August, there was a false alarm being circulated by email that Mars was going to be super-close to Earth on August 27.

Emily Lakdawalla

I just noticed this picture on the Cassini raw images website. I love these