Articles

Bill Nye

If you or I ingest arsenic, well...it doesn't go so well. If you are, on the other hand, a certain species of bacterium from Mono Lake, California, ingesting this seemingly toxic metal is simple enough.

Emily Lakdawalla

This was a fun image released by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera science team. Take a look at it and see if you can figure out what the significance of the red arrow is.

Emily Lakdawalla

JPL has just released some test images from the camera that has just been installed on the end of the Curiosity rover's robotic arm.

Emily Lakdawalla

I couldn't believe these videos when I first saw them: five views from engineering cameras of important events in the Chang'E 2 spacecraft's journey to the Moon.

Yong-Chun Zheng

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao announced the success of Chang'E-2 lunar mission on Monday. Yong-Chun Zheng, an associate professor at the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, presents the mission's first released pictures.

Rosaly Lopes

Rosaly Lopes relates her time at a workshop in Piton.

Rosaly Lopes

There are about 60 volcanologists here at the meeting and we are wondering if the volcano is going to erupt and, if it does, what we will be able to see.

Rosaly Lopes

It so happens that there is a Calderas Workshop going on the same week as DPS and I was invited to talk about planetary calderas. I chose several on Venus, Mars and Io to focus on.

Emily Lakdawalla

Hey everybody, go out and look up at the Moon! It's International Observe the Moon night.

Emily Lakdawalla

I'm listening to a press briefing from several members of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter science team, regarding three papers published today in Science.

Emily Lakdawalla

Imagine this landscape: you're walking across an unusually smooth lunar surface, an impact melt sheet on the floor of a relatively recently formed crater.

Emily Lakdawalla

NASA announced today that they had placed several new sets of historical photos on their

Emily Lakdawalla

MESSENGER is in a unique position in the solar system, orbiting the Sun well within the orbit of Venus. From there, it can gaze outward from the Sun to search for tiny objects that may possibly be traveling in the same region, called vulcanoids.

Ryan Anderson

Ok, so remember the weird rock I showed in my Galcier Park geology post?

Ryan Anderson

Well, the field trip is over and I am happy to say that I was not eaten by any bears. They seemed much more interested in the huckleberries.

Emily Lakdawalla

Acidalia Planitia is a large basin in Mars' northern lowlands, a dark splotch visible even from Earth telescopes.

Ryan Anderson

Well folks, I'm headed off to Big Sky Country tomorrow (aka Montana)! I'll start the week at the MSL camera team meeting, where I will get all sorts of cool news about the MastCam, MAHLI and MARDI cameras which I will not be able to share with you.

Emily Lakdawalla

This news is no surprise, but I think it's the first such discovery I've heard of: the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team has identified a new crater on the Moon, one that wasn't there when Apollo 15 flew over.

Emily Lakdawalla

Three months ago, grandiosely, I announced that I was going to survey volcanism across the solar system, and I began the journey on Earth. Then I failed to follow up.

Emily Lakdawalla

Orientale is the youngest large impact basin on the Moon, which means that very little of it has been obliterated by later impacts.