Articles

Van Kane

No mission to Europa, diminished funding for outer planets missions, a small bump to small spacecraft missions, and an increase for asteroid detection are part of the White House's proposal for NASA in 2014.

Casey Dreier

NASA's new budget doubles down on cuts to Planetary Science, despite Congress rejecting a similar proposal last year.

Emily Lakdawalla

Doug Ellison shared this lovely panorama via Twitter over the weekend. It's from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, taken back in 2004. The drunken path in the foreground is a visual record of just how exciting it was for Spirit to have finally made it to the Columbia Hills, and to rocks that were not fragments of basalt.

Casey Dreier

NASA's Curiosity rover has acquired further evidence that Mars's atmosphere was once dense enough to support liquid water on the surface.

Bill Dunford

Dispatches from five different worlds--all sent by robotic spacecraft on the same day.

Casey Dreier

Despite a $223 million boost from Congress this year, NASA's Planetary Science Division may not be allowed to use that money so NASA can prevent cuts in other programs.

Emily Lakdawalla

Some beautiful photos of a recent gliding flight test of SpaceShipTwo.

Emily Lakdawalla

I've been to a lot of conferences and seen a lot of talks and it's amazing to me how a bad presentation can get in the way of really exciting science. Here are my recommendations for how to approach a talk, and tips and tricks to make your talk better.

On April 12, 2013, the world’s biggest space party will take place across the globe. So far there are 190 parties in 32 countries on 6 continents registered and counting!!

Michael Poston

The case for water ice hidden in permanently shadowed regions at the north pole of the planet Mercury received another boost recently. On Wednesday March 20, 2013 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Nancy Chabot presented the very first visible-light images of what is in the shadows of these polar craters.

Van Kane

Aviation Week and Space Technology reports that the President’s next budget request for NASA will include funds to begin developing a mission to bring an asteroid to the Earth-moon system.

Emily Lakdawalla

Some silly fun to brighten your Wednesday.

Emily Lakdawalla

This very accessible textbook begins at the beginning, explaining how all the things in the solar system were made from star stuff.

Bill Dunford

Explore the mysterious Martian landscape with the workhorse of the Solar System, Mars Odyssey.

A.J.S. Rayl

As the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission trekked further into its tenth year of exploring the Red Planet, Opportunity spent the month of March finishing up its science investigations on Matijevic Hill.

Emily Lakdawalla

India's Mars Orbiter Mission has been much in the news in Asian media over the last week as a result of the release of ISRO's Annual Report 2012-2013. Also, ISRO and NASA issued a joint statement from Washington a week ago endorsing interagency cooperation in the space sciences

Marc Rayman

Marc Rayman's latest Dawn journal explains the temperature adjustments engineers make to save power and keep the spacecraft warm.

Bill Nye

The Planetary Society just achieved a major victory in our efforts to ensure strong funding for NASA’s planetary exploration.

Emily Lakdawalla

Curiosity is back to science operations, though the activities are limited in scope by the fact that conjunction is fast approaching. Here's a couple of neat images from sol 227.

Larry Crumpler

Flash memory or computer problems oddly occurred on both Curiosity and Opportunity around Feb 27. One possibility is that a large solar flare resulted in radiation at Mars sufficient to temporarily corrupt the memory on both rovers.