Articles

Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.

LightSail Update: The International Solar Sailing Symposium

Japan's IKAROS team stole the show at the International Solar Sailing Symposium in New York City, where they announced that their spacecraft had achieved controlled solar sail flight.

Bill Nye Connects with Space People at IAC

The 61st International Astronautical Congress (IAC) is being held in Prague in the Czech Republic, and Bill Nye is attending on behalf of the Planetary Society.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Climate Sounder artist concept

Mars Climate Sounder Watches Mars Weather to Prepare for Curiosity Landing

Two weeks ago Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) started a four-week campaign to support entry, descent, and landing phase for the next Mars rover, Mars Science Laboratory (or

Update from the Ozma@50 Workshop

Frank Drake used the 85' radio telescope at Green Bank to conduct the first modern Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in 1960. Using a very simple receiver and no computers, he listened to each of two sunlike stars for 100 seconds. Call that unit 1 Ozma.

More from the Ozma@50 Workshop

Today's sessions at the Ozma@50 conference stretched the mind as these multidisciplinary gatherings usually do.

Report from SETI workshop marking 50 years since Project Ozma

Jon Lomberg repots from NRAO--the National Radio Astronomy Observatory-- in Greenbank, West Virginia on a SETI workshop marking the 50th anniversary of Project Ozma.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Climate Sounder

Successor to Mars Climate Orbiter will fly aboard ExoMars

Congratulations to the Mars Climate Sounder team on winning a spot for a successor instrument aboard the next Mars orbiter, the joint NASA-ESA ExoMars, set to launch in 2016.

Locations of asteroids in the inner solar system

The Potential to Destroy Civilization? Now on YouTube

Visualization can help the brain comprehend what words and numbers can struggle to covey. There's a YouTube video posted by

Tracing the Big Picture of Mars' Atmosphere

One of the instruments on a 2016 mission to orbit Mars will provide daily maps of global, pole-to-pole, vertical distributions of the temperature, dust, water vapor and ice clouds in the Martian atmosphere.

New Pulsar Discovery Shows Power of Citizen Scientists and Planetary Society Members

Planetary Society members have reason to celebrate today, with the on-line publication in Science of the discovery of a new pulsar by three citizen-scientists working with Einstein@home, a descendant of the SETI@home project.

LightSail team learns from IKAROS

While we were in New York for the International Solar Sailing Symposium last week, we held a meeting with the Japanese IKAROS team to discuss technical results and issues in our two projects.

From the Solar Sail Symposium in New York

This week, Bill Nye and I are attending the International Solar Sail Symposium at the New York College of Technology.

Observing the Martian Atmosphere for Two Mars Years

June 29, 2010 was the second Martian anniversary of the start of Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) observations at Mars.

LightSail 1 Passes Critical Design Review

LightSail 1, the Planetary Society's new ultra-light Cubesat-based solar sail spacecraft, has passed its Critical Design Review.

Apply for a Shoemaker NEO Grant! Deadline extended to June 24

Amateur astronomers, get your proposals in for this year's round of Shoemaker NEO Grants!

Firming Up the Spacecraft Design

The LightSail 1 spacecraft development is proceeding well. Our engineering team has completed crucial milestones to building the vehicle that will demonstrate the value and potential of using sunlight alone to propel exploratory craft through space.