Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has successfully imaged the impact site of the Beresheet lander, which made a really good run at performing the first privately funded Moon landing on 11 April, but crashed after the failure of its main engine.

Jason Davis

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is currently sweeping arcs between the asteroid's north and south poles.

Andrew Jones

The first science results from the unprecedented Chang’e-4 lunar far side mission are in. The mission’s Yutu-2 rover, deployed from the lander shortly after the Chang’e-4 landing on 3 January, has, with the help of the Queqiao relay satellite, returned data which suggests it has discovered material derived from the Moon’s mantle.

Emily Lakdawalla

According to amateur spacecraft tracker Daniel Estévez, Longjiang-2 will crash into the Moon on 31 July after more than a year in lunar orbit.

Jason Davis

The Planetary Society's solar sail spacecraft will lift off 22 June 2019 on a mission to demonstrate the power of sunlight for propulsion.

Casey Dreier

The White House released a long-awaited supplemental budget request for NASA today. It proposes an additional $1.6 billion for an accelerated human spaceflight effort to land on the Moon in 2024. This boosts the President's budget request for NASA to $22.6 billion in fiscal year 2020, which is approximately $1.1 billion or 5% more than the amount provided by Congress last year.

Jason Davis

The Planetary Society's solar sailing CubeSat is officially on the road to launch.

Highlights from the hearing, 'Keeping our Sights on Mars: A Review of NASA's Deep Space Plans' held on May 8th in the House of Representatives.

Kaushik Mitra

Although we have acquired compelling evidence of flowing liquid water on early Mars, the fundamental question about how water could be stable under Martian atmospheric conditions remains unsolved.

Jason Davis

Hayabusa2's SCI experiment fell toward Ryugu for 40 minutes before detonating about 300 meters above the surface.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla worked closely with Chop Shop Studio to support the creation of a new product: Planetary Blocks.

Jason Davis

India's combination lunar orbiter, lander, and rover spacecraft was previously scheduled to lift off in May.

Bruce Betts

Our grants fund amateur observers, underfunded professional observers, and observers in developing countries who make vital contributions to NEO research.

A.J.S. Rayl

It’s a fall afternoon at Endeavour Crater. The summer winds finally lost their energy and the dust storm season is over. But there are no more signals coming from Earth. No more comm sessions with the orbiters. Nothing like it used to be.

Casey Dreier

Thirty years ago, President George H.W. Bush announced an ambitious program to return humans to the Moon. It failed. Today the Trump Administration wants the same thing. Can a failed lunar return effort help this one succeed?

Jason Davis

Each year, we ask our Shoemaker NEO Grant winners to help us tell the world about their work. Here's what they said.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Curiosity team is touring Glen Torridon, the Valley of Clay, south of Vera Rubin Ridge, happily photographing everything and zapping rocks. It’s clearly a delight for the team to be in a place they’ve been hoping to reach for 7 years.

Alfred McEwen

Blurred images and battery issues are no longer an immediate problem.

Emily Lakdawalla

InSight has finally detected its first Marsquakes, but so far, none have been large enough to produce good science. Still, it’s great news that the seismometer is producing sensible data.

Andrew Jones

China’s Chang’e-4 lander and Yutu-2 rover are continuing to function well and have completed their fourth lunar day.