Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla

Here in Von Karman auditorium at JPL, as they get ready for the press conference, they are playing

Emily Lakdawalla

I woke this morning to find a press release in my Inbox that said:

Emily Lakdawalla

The panel consists of: Andy Danztler, Solar System Division Director at NASA HQ; Rick Grammier, Deep Impact Project Manager, JPL; Jennifer Rocca, Deep Impact Systems Engineer, JPL; and Mike A'Hearn, Principal Investigator, University of Maryland.

Emily Lakdawalla

After the press conference I asked Mike A'Hearn a couple of questions about the raw images we're seeing online.

Emily Lakdawalla

OK, I'm in...I arrived at an unusually empty Jet Propulsion Laboratory this morning in advance of the first Deep Impact encounter press conference.

Emily Lakdawalla

I know I've probably disappointed a few people by not having had anything much to say about Cosmos 1 for a while. It's because, well, we haven't had anything much to say.

Emily Lakdawalla

In the midst of all this hoopla about Deep Impact, I haven't been able to give the proper attention to Cassini, which began its second year of operations at Saturn today.

Emily Lakdawalla

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft is set for its date with Comet Tempel 1.

Emily Lakdawalla

A reader has pointed out that JPL has changed their online press kit for Deep Impact, which was my primary source material for the encounter timeline.

Emily Lakdawalla

With four days remaining until Deep Impact crashes into comet Tempel 1, the comet is looming larger and larger in the public view.

Emily Lakdawalla

Less than a week remains before the Deep Impact mission is set to meet its fate at Tempel 1. A mission like this has been a dream for planetary scientists for a long time.

Emily Lakdawalla

Apparently there is a bogus email circulating around the Web with the following text:

Emily Lakdawalla

The Cassini imaging team has released an image containing a feature unlike any other that they have seen on Titan. The very dark color, curvaceous outline, and sharp edge of the feature have led them to the conclusion that it could well be the long-theorized but never-before-seen body of liquid hydrocarbons on the surface of Titan.

Emily Lakdawalla

Announcing The Planetary Society's Weblog.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini's been in orbit around Saturn for almost exactly a year now, and the mission seems pretty much to have dropped off of the public radar screen. But there's still three years to go on the primary mission, and lots left to do, and I for one am not at all bored.

Emily Lakdawalla

...we think.

Emily Lakdawalla

Rehearsals don't always go so well, which is the whole point of rehearsals. That was true both for us and for the Russians today, in separate simulations of mission operations.

Emily Lakdawalla

Yesterday, we sent out an invitation to print, TV, and Web media for the launch event we'll be holding at our Pasadena headquarters on Tuesday. So today, the buzz really began about our mission, and the phones are beginning to ring off the hook.

Emily Lakdawalla

Here at Cosmos 1 Project Operations Pasadena -- or POP -- we are scrambling to get our mission operations plans and procedures ready for our launch, just 11 days from now.