Articles

Jason Davis

The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft will deploy its Small Carry-on Impactor experiment, SCI, on 5 April.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Hayabusa2 team held a press briefing last week at LPSC to report newly published results on asteroid Ryugu.

Jason Davis

The Israeli spacecraft is set to enter lunar orbit on 4 April at 17:57 UTC (13:57 EDT).

Emily Lakdawalla

The HP3 mole started hammering itself today, and almost immediately (after just 5 minutes) appears to have encountered a rock. No matter; they'll try again Saturday.

Emily Lakdawalla

InSight has placed its second science instrument on the ground and set it free. Now it's time to bury the heat probe in the soil.

Casey Dreier

SpaceX says it wants to save NASA money, but its actions could cost taxpayers more in the end.

A.J.S. Rayl

At around 8 pm February 12, 2019, Pacific Standard Time (PST), the final commands were transmitted to Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rover that defied all odds.

Emily Lakdawalla

InSight has gone two for two, placing the second of its instruments gently on the Martian ground.

Emily Lakdawalla

Curiosity completed work at Vera Rubin Ridge with an easy drilling activity at Rock Hall. Now it has finally driven on to mineral-rick rocks that were seen from orbit, long before Curiosity arrived. The team plans a lengthy traverse of the clay-bearing unit.

Emily Lakdawalla

InSight mission has successfully placed the wind and thermal shield over the seismometer. The seismometer will now be shielded from winds and kept warm over the cold Martian nights, so the quality of its data should dramatically increase.

A.J.S. Rayl

As a string of dust storms moved through Meridiani Planum and over Endeavour Crater in January, Opportunity silently wrapped her fifteenth year on the surface of Mars.

Emily Lakdawalla

Engineers have leveled the seismometer and made progress on adjusting the position of the tether so that it doesn't interfere for the experiment. Most significantly for the mission, they have balanced the Very Broad Band sensors -- 3 of SEIS’ 6 seismic sensors -- and confirmed that they are generating good data.

A.J.S. Rayl

It’s now been more than six and a half months that the longest-lived robot on another planet has been incommunicado.

Emily Lakdawalla

The latest images downlinked from New Horizons show MU69 to be a textbook example of a contact binary. How do contact binaries form? Updated with images released on 3 January.

Emily Lakdawalla

New Horizons has

Emily Lakdawalla

Today at 19:43 UTC, OSIRIS-REx entered orbit at asteroid Bennu. In so doing, it accomplished both the tightest orbit (at an altitude under 2 kilometers) and the orbit of the smallest object ever. UPDATE: Early science results from OSIRIS-REx discussed at New Horizons MU69 flyby event.

Emily Lakdawalla

Unaffected by the shutdown of the U.S. government, New Horizons is still on course for its New Year’s encounter with 2014 MU69 (nicknamed “Ultima Thule”). This post collects the latest images from New Horizons' approach to the tiny Kuiper belt object and will be updated regularly.

Marc Rayman

After more than 11 years in deep space, after unveiling the two largest uncharted worlds in the inner solar system, after overcoming myriad daunting obstacles, Dawn's interplanetary adventure has come to an end.

Emily Lakdawalla

It’s been a busy first three weeks on the InSight mission, and they’ve already achieved a major milestone: placing the seismometer on the ground. They've also gathered a self-portrait and 360-degree panorama.

Emily Lakdawalla

New Horizons is rapidly approaching its New Year’s encounter with the most distant world ever visited, 2014 MU69. Closest approach will be at a distance of 3,500 kilometers at about 05:33 on 1 January UTC.