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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Eleven perijoves
Seán Doran has made a cool visual index to the images that JunoCam took during Juno's first 12 closest approaches to Jupiter.
#Mercury2018: From MESSENGER to BepiColombo and beyond
A Mercury meeting held May 1-3 summarized the current and future science of the innermost planet. Emily Lakdawalla was there and shares her notes.
Book Excerpt: The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the radioisotope power system works
Readers, colleagues, friends: it's finally happened. My first book is finally out in the world. Here's an excerpt that explains the design and operation of Curiosity's MMRTG, (it also applies to the future Mars 2020 rover power supply).
Juno meets Cassini: A new merged global map of Jupiter
The Juno spacecraft that is currently orbiting Jupiter has obtained the first good images of Jupiter's polar regions. I am presenting here a combined global map of Jupiter, made from a Cassini map I made for the equatorial and temperate regions and polar maps made from the Juno JunoCam and JIRAM polar images.
Juno's 12th perijove in lifelike color
With the help of some preprocessing of JunoCam images by Mattias Malmer, Don Davis shows us how Jupiter might have looked on April 1, 2018, if we'd been aboard Juno.
Philae science results: Comet 67P is crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside
What is the surface of a comet like? That's one of the main questions that motivated Philae's mission to the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. We now know the comet has a rigid crust about 10 to 50 centimeters thick, below which the comet is much more fluffy.
Go Atlas, go Centaur, go InSight!
NASA’s next Mars mission launched successfully from Vandenberg Air Force Base today!
The Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Studies Mystery Rock, Mission Officials Seek 2019 Extension
Opportunity spent April further exploring the area about halfway down Perseverance Valley, checking out unusual, vesicular or pitted rocks the likes of which she has never seen, while officials prepared the mission’s bid to keep the robot field geologist roving through 2019.
A Comet or Titan: The Next New Frontiers Mission
Both would do compelling science in the mid-2030s. Otherwise the two missions could not be more different.
MarCO: CubeSats to Mars!
MarCO or Mars Cube One is an experimental mission that is sending two tiny spacecraft along with InSight to Mars. If successful, they will relay real-time telemetry from InSight to Earth during the landing.
An update on the potential habitability of TRAPPIST-1
One year ago, Franck Marchis wrote an article about the remarkable discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system. Here's an update.
‘SuperCam’ Update: Multi-purpose Instrument Coming Together for 2020 Launch to Mars
Excitement is building within the SuperCam team as the instrument enters the final stages of assembly and testing toward an anticipated launch aboard NASA’s Mars 2020 rover.
The Mars Exploration Rovers Update Special Report: Perseverance Science So Far, New View of Endeavour at LPSC 2018
For the 15th year in a row, Opportunity drove into the spotlight during an afternoon session at the 49th Lunar & Planetary Science Conference.
What kind of asteroid is Ryugu?
What do we already know about Ryugu, and why is it so hard to know what it looks like? Hayabusa2 Mission Manger Makoto Yoshikawa
Moon Monday: Prometheus
Happy Monday! Here's a picture of Prometheus. You may think it's a picture of Saturn. Look hard, toward the bottom, and you'll see Prometheus, doing its part to keep the F ring in line.
OSIRIS-REx shows us space isn't entirely empty
What a cool photo of OSIRIS-REx's sample return capsule! But wait, what's that black dot near the top?
The Opportunity selfie: 5000 Sols in the making
A personal story recounts how a NASA team used a microscopic imager to take a selfie of the Opportunity rover.
Curiosity Update, sols 1972-2026: Completing the Vera Rubin Ridge Walkabout
The Curiosity team has completed its initial survey of the top of Vera Rubin Ridge, and is ready to make another attempt at drilling after the rock at Lake Orcadie proved to be too hard.
Space grade electronics: How NASA’s Juno survives near Jupiter
Take a look at how electronics of spacecraft are built to survive the harshness of space environments.
Pretty Pictures of the Cosmos: Hidden in Plain Sight
Award-winning astrophotographer Adam Block shares of his latest work.