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

Solar system montage with eight planets

"Moon?"

It's a legal holiday here in the U.S. (President's day), and my daughter's babysitter is taking the day off, so I won't be getting much work done today. But I thought I'd check in to share the fact that, as we got out of the car last week, my daughter pointed up in the sky at the crescent moon and said

Clouds drift by Opportunity, sol 1,433 (February 4, 2008)

Opportunity watches the clouds drift by

Opportunity is now following a rather leisurely autumn schedule, according to the latest update on the mission website. Some of the work Opportunity is doing involves staring skyward, looking for patterns in the clouds that pass overhead at this time of year. One of the guys at unmannedspaceflight.com has put together some nifty animations of the wispy cloud patterns.

White Rock from Mariner 9

White Rock through the ages: Mariner 9, 1972

While conversing with Ken Edgett about the smiley face on Mars he remarked to me how different Mars looks at different pixel scales, and in particular that there is a transition somewhere in the neighborhood of six to seven meters per pixel.

Mars during the 2003 opposition

Finding images from Mars

There have been so many missions to Mars, which have sent back so much data, that figuring out how to find images of places on Mars can be really overwhelming.

Have a happy day

Have a happy day on Mars

I thought this was a fun image to kick off the weekend. This isn't the first happy-looking crater to be photographed from Mars, but I really like this one; it's more goofy.

Dawn in survey orbit at Ceres

Dawn Journal: Safely Cruising

Now in interplanetary cruise, the Dawn spacecraft is following a much more leisurely pace than the one it maintained during the initial checkout phase of the mission.

Mars Exploration Rover

The Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Spirit and Opportunity Begin Fifth Year of Exploration in Shadow of "Little Sasquatch "

The Mars Exploration Rovers celebrated their fourth birthdays and began their fifth year of exploring this month -- and for the first time since the big dust storm hit the headlines last summer, Spirit and Opportunity made the news. It wasn't for the notable exploration or engineering milestone they had just achieved or the discoveries they've helped scientists make about a once very different Mars. It was because of an alleged

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