Articles

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

It's in space, of course, and has a very, very long way to go to Pluto (nearly 50 billion kilometers). But it's finally more than 1 Astronomical Unit from the Sun.

Emily Lakdawalla

I received a lot of email over the weekend about New Horizons. Many of them were expressing concern about how little news there has been since launch. Have no fear.

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla

So the Stardust press conference is still going on on NASA TV, but I am now turning to the Internet to monitor the status of New Horizons' third attempted launch day.

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla

I am updating this as I take notes from the press conference.

Emily Lakdawalla

I was looking at that table of launch times for New Horizons and realized that the table included another valuable column of data that I hadn't noticed before: it tells you what year New Horizons will arrive, for each of the possible launch dates.

Emily Lakdawalla

Well, it was a nail-biting morning and too bad that New Horizons didn't go but these things happen pretty frequently.

Emily Lakdawalla

There's a new

Emily Lakdawalla

Over the weekend, New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern posted a new

Emily Lakdawalla

I'll just make this an

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

According to the latest Venus Express Status Reporton ESA's website, the Near Earth Commissioning Phase of the mission has been completed successfully, and the spacecraft is going to be napping for a few weeks as it continues to cruise toward Venus.

Emily Lakdawalla

Time Magazine is running an Image of the Year contest, and at the moment, a Cassini image is in 2nd place!

Emily Lakdawalla

The Applied Physics Laboratory announced today that MESSENGER's first