Articles

A.J.S. Rayl

While Curiosity and her team found themselves entangled in a media furor over comments, assumptions, and rumors of findings that have yet to be found, Opportunity roved on in November, finishing up the geologic survey of Matijevic Hill and setting a new mileage record along the way.

Emily Lakdawalla

With all the hoopla surrounding the unknown results of the first analysis of a soil sample by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, I thought an explainer would be useful. What is SAM, what is it designed to measure, and what is the nature of its results? Here you go.

Emily Lakdawalla

Good news, everyone! The OSIRIS-REx team wants to give as many kids as possible a chance to Name That Asteroid! The contest entry deadline has been extended to December 31.

Emily Lakdawalla

Water ice at Mercury's poles? That's crazy, right? The MESSENGER team has made a very good case that radar-bright material seen by the Arecibo telescope is, in fact, water ice, covered in most places by a veneer of dark organic material.

Emily Lakdawalla

Zach Weiner of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal critiques NASA's announcement style.

Daniel Macháček

A few days ago, the Dawn mission finally published their archival data. During the year of delay I often looked with anticipation to the Planetary Data System to check whether or not images were there, and I am delighted that they are finally available. Was the wait worth it? Definitely!

Emily Lakdawalla

Remember the amazing photo of Saturn's north pole that I posted yesterday? Now, thanks to an amateur image processor, it moves, and the motions of the individual clouds within the belts are mesmerizing.

Emily Lakdawalla

Amazing photos have just come back from Cassini, of swirling clouds surrounding Saturn's north pole.

Mat Kaplan

The New Horizons Pluto mission PI provides an update, and introduces his new public project called Uwingu.

Emily Lakdawalla

Michael Benson's Planetfall and a children's edition of his earlier book Beyond put the gorgeous pictures returned from space front and center.

Jason Davis

Representatives from the ESA approved a 10 billion euro budget for 2013-2017 during their Ministerial Council last week in Naples, Italy.

Emily Lakdawalla

On Saturday, while parked for the Thanksgiving holiday at the edge of Glenelg, Curiosity took a lovely panorama pointed to the east and into Glenelg.

Casey Dreier

MSL Curiosity left the Earth one year ago today. This is my experience of the launch.

Emily Lakdawalla

Springer has made online access to PDF copies of several of their journals free through November 30. One of them, Space Science Reviews, is the one that publishes the canonical papers on most spacecraft instruments. It's a bonanza!

Emily Lakdawalla

This week's Cosmoquest Astronomy Hour Google+ Hangout at 1600 PST / midnight UTC on Wednesday will feature me and Fraser Cain talking about what Curiosity's been up to, and answering your questions.

Emily Lakdawalla

An animation of Curiosity photos shows changes in the weather.

Emily Lakdawalla

This morning while driving to work I heard a terrific story about Curiosity on National Public Radio from Joe Palca, NPR's science correspondent. It was a great story despite the fact that it contained virtually no news. The nugget of non-news is that SAM's analysis of Mars soil has yielded some unspecified, exciting, but not-yet-confirmed result. But that's not really what Palca's story is about.

Mat Kaplan

A Planetary Radio status report from the Dawn mission's Marc Rayman, accompanied by a fascinating video tour of Marc's at-home collection of space information and memorabilia.

Mat Kaplan

Bill Nye and Planetary Society colleagues welcome mission leaders Richard Cook and John Grotzinger to a live discussion about the Mars Science Laboratory Rover.

Bruce Betts

I am happy to announce a new call for proposals for The Planetary Society’s Gene Shoemaker Near Earth Object (NEO) grant program, which is celebrating its 15th Anniversary. Proposals are due Feb. 4, 2013.