Explore Worlds
Find Life
Defend Earth
All
All
Sun
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
They released the entire Cassini RADAR swath across Xanadu!
Following immediately on the heels of the release of the
Cassini's T7 RADAR view of southern Titan; northern swath coming soon
Cassini's T7 flyby of Titan occurred on September 7, 2005. They've now released the full swath of RADAR image data to the Planetary Data System; here it is for your enjoyment.
The Borup Fiord Field Site
The Sulfur Springs of Borup Fiord Pass, Ellesmere Island, offer an excellent Europa analog.
MESSENGER has flipped for the last time
I just received a MESSENGER mission news update stating that the MESSENGER spacecraft, en route to Mercury via two Venus flybys, has passed another milestone on its long journey: it has, for the last time, passed from Earth's environs toward the inner solar system.
New Horizons tracks an asteroid
New Horizons is spending the summer traversing the asteroid belt. I haven't written a lot about New Horizons lately because the mission has been going so uneventfully well. But now I've got something to write about: data!!
The official publication on the second Titan RADAR swath is out
Today Nature published an article titled
A couple of neat artist's conceptions of ExoMars
With the Aurora program under way, the next European mission to Mars will be a rover named ExoMars, to be launched in 2011.
An Odyssey THEMIS image of Gale Crater, Mars
This week's releases from the Mars Odyssey THEMIS team included a gorgeous one of the layered interior of Gale crater.
Europe goes ahead with Aurora
This item is a little bit old -- I missed it when it was announced last Monday. ESA issued a press release stating that
Cassini RADAR: Another Flyby, Another Completely Different View of Titan
OK, I finally got a story written about the latest and greatest of the Cassini RADAR data based upon a conversation I had with with Ralph Lorenz late last week.
Cassini RADAR images of the surface of Titan
Since the last Titan flyby on April 30, the Cassini RADAR team has been releasing quite a large number of pieces of the swath to the Web.
A play-by-play of the Cassini scare on Mayday
Last week's Cassini Significant Events Report included a detailed play-by-play of the frightening morning of Mayday. I thought it was a very interesting read on how a mission deals with an
OPAG, Day 2: Update from the NASA Advisory Committee meetings this week
During the first day of OPAG, the chair of the group, Fran Bagenal, was not present because she was participating in some rather important discussions taking place in Maryland.
OPAG, Day 2: Ground-based study of the small bodies in the outer solar system
After the political discussions of the morning, Mike Brown stood up to give the
OPAG, Day 1: Hot-air ballooning on Titan
The next presentation at OPAG was given by Ralph Lorenz and Tom Spilker on a Titan Montgolfiere Mission Study. What's a Montgolfiere, you ask?
OPAG, Day 1: Uranus equinox is coming up
Heidi Hammel gave a brief but spirited presentation designed to wake up the audience to the fact that Uranus is fast approaching its equinox, an event that will happen on December 7, 2007.
OPAG, Day 1: Status of radioisotope power and communications support for future missions
Following the mission- and science-focused presentations of the morning, there came two rather alarming presentations.
OPAG: Looking back
The two-day meeting of the Outer Planets Assessment Group is over and I have 30-odd pages of notes to wrestle with.
OPAG, Day 1: Cassini and Juno status
The Outer Planets Assessment Group opened with the status of two of the three actual outer planets missions, Cassini and Juno.
OPAG, Day 1: Getting to Europa
Next up at the Outer Planets Assessment Group meeting was an overview of the plans for future Europa missions.