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

Bradbury Landing

Curiosity's landing site named for Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury explored Mars, and the future of humanity, through words and ideas--vehicles of the imagination. He was a visionary author and, through his writings and lectures, was a direct or indirect mentor to so many of us involved with designing, building, and operating the actual space vehicles of today. I think it is so fitting, then, that the MSL team has memorialized Ray's contributions to the exploration of the planets -- and especially Mars -- by naming Curiosity's landing site in his honor.

Mars InSight

NASA Selects InSight Mars 2016 Lander

NASA has selected JPL's InSight mission to Mars as its next Discovery mission. The first geophysics mission to Mars, InSight will use a Phoenix-like lander to deploy a seismometer and a heat probe and give us our first detailed insights into the interior of the Red Planet.

Titan Mare Explorer (TiME)

A Bittersweet Day for Planetary Exploration

A new Mars mission was announced today, which is cause for celebration. But two other exciting missions where not selected, why? Money, or lack thereof. All we need is a little bit more, and we could be exploring the solar system, not just Mars.

Highly processed version of Curiosity sol 0 rear hazcam image

The first Curiosity 360-degree panorama including the mountain

Damien Bouic took Curiosity's Hazcam images of Aeolis Mons / Mount Sharp and merged them with a beautiful 360-degree Navcam panorama to give us our first look at what the view will look like once the mission finally gets higher-resolution images that include the mountain's peak.

NASA meatball logo

Let NASA Dare Mighty Things Again

In the space Olympics, the U.S. just won gold. So what, in the scheme of things, is the justification for the draconian budget cuts to NASA’s planetary program that threaten scientists’ carefully thought out plans for exploring the solar system in the coming decade?

MARDI view of Curiosity's heat shield falling away

Some fun with Curiosity MARDI images

Yesterday Curiosity returned a pile of full-resolution descent imager photos to Earth. The full-resolution MARDI images are just as great as we anticipated.

Curiosity, or Mars Science Laboratory

Sampling Mars, Part 1: The Hardware

The opening of a multi-part guest blog series by Curiosity systems engineering team lead for the Surface Sampling and Science system. Part 1 explains the robotic arm and the Sample Acquisition, Processing and Handling subsystem.

A dirty rover deck, Curiosity sol 2

Curiosity sol 9 update

An update on Curiosity's status as of sol 9, and a look ahead to the next month or two of commissioning activities.

Curiosity Marsdial on Mars!

Curiosity's Marsdial is on Mars!

Following the successful landing of the Curiosity rover, it is gratifying indeed to see the third MarsDial© photometric calibration (cal) target on the planet Mars. It is something near and dear to me personally, and it's good for all of us, because it helps us do good science.

Heat Shield Away!

Video, sound, and timeline of Curiosity's descent

A fantastic video produced by Brian Lynch combines the thumbnail images from Curiosity's Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) with the audio from the control room during landing night and a detailed timeline from spaceflight101.com.

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