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

OPAG, Day 1: Getting to Europa

Next up at the Outer Planets Assessment Group meeting was an overview of the plans for future Europa missions.

OPAG, Day 1: Cassini and Juno status

The Outer Planets Assessment Group opened with the status of two of the three actual outer planets missions, Cassini and Juno.

How much data has Cassini returned to Earth?

Since January 1, 2004—the beginning of the Saturn phase of the mission—Cassini has radioed almost 139 Gigabytes of science data to Earth.

New Horizons passes farther from the Sun than Mars today!

Today is the day that New Horizons passes Mars' orbit (not that Mars is anywhere close to New Horizons right now).

Iapetus as seen from Cassini on March 30, 2006

Updated Cassini tour table

Cassini planner Dave Seal gave me a newly updated list of times and dates for Cassini's ongoing tour of the Saturn system, so I went through and compared my table to his and made updates to flyby distances.

Global Saturnshine view of Enceladus in color

LPSC: Wednesday afternoon: Cassini at Enceladus

So after those two rover talks I skipped over to the other large room to listen to what the Cassini science teams had to say about Enceladus.

Global color view of Titan with a polar hood (7 December 2011)

LPSC, Wednesday morning: Titan

This morning at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference began with Titan, and then later in the morning I had to choose between skipping Titan and going over to rover sessions, or staying with Titan. I elected to stay with Titan.

Half-phase Enceladus in color, 7 April 2010

The hubbub about Enceladus

I just posted a very brief story about all of the press releases that have been whizzing around today about the possibility of liquid water on Enceladus.

Cassini is wrapping up another Titan flyby

This one is

The Orbital Dance of Epimetheus and Janus

Saturn is surrounded by a crowded family of rings and moons, and two of those moons -- Epimetheus and Janus -- orbit Saturn so close together that it seems as though their different orbital speeds should make them crash into each other.

Where is New Horizons now?

It's in space, of course, and has a very, very long way to go to Pluto (nearly 50 billion kilometers). But it's finally more than 1 Astronomical Unit from the Sun.

New Horizons update

I received a lot of email over the weekend about New Horizons. Many of them were expressing concern about how little news there has been since launch. Have no fear.

OK, back to New Horizons!

So the Stardust press conference is still going on on NASA TV, but I am now turning to the Internet to monitor the status of New Horizons' third attempted launch day.

New Horizons post-launch press conference

I am updating this as I take notes from the press conference.

After the launch

We just got back from the real post-launch party, following two non-post-launch parties on the last two evenings. This was more like it.

How New Horizons' launch date affects its arrival date

I was looking at that table of launch times for New Horizons and realized that the table included another valuable column of data that I hadn't noticed before: it tells you what year New Horizons will arrive, for each of the possible launch dates.