Articles

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

3D anaglyph of Curiosity in the clean room

MSL Roves!

I'm a little late on this, but I thought I should share the news: MSL now has a good head and neck on its shoulders, and has officially

New impact crater on the Moon found in LROC image

New crater found in LROC image from the Moon

This news is no surprise, but I think it's the first such discovery I've heard of: the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team has identified a new crater on the Moon, one that wasn't there when Apollo 15 flew over.

New Horizons looks at Jupiter from more than 16 AU away

New Horizons images Jupiter again

Three years after New Horizons flew past Jupiter on its way to Pluto, the spacecraft has imaged the giant planet again.

Voyager at Saturn, one year later

Here are two newly processed portraits of Saturn, showing the planet just after its equinox.

Curiosity rolls!

Enjoy my extremely low-tech animation of Curiosity's first

Example from ASU's new zoomable global Odyssey THEMIS map of Mars

A spectacular new global map of Mars, which YOU can make even better

I am such a nerd. This new map of Mars just brought tears to my eyes. Honestly.

Watching the birth and death of moonlets in Saturn's F ring

The Saturn system is always in motion, always changing. Saturn itself is a gas giant, with swirling storms, and like the other gas giants it has a host of moons flying around, perturbing each other's motions. And then there's the rings.

Color portrait of asteroid 21 Lutetia

Since it doesn't look like the Rosetta mission is going to be releasing any color versions of their Lutetia close-encounter images any time soon, I figured it was time to make one.

Volcanism across the solar system: Io

Three months ago, grandiosely, I announced that I was going to survey volcanism across the solar system, and I began the journey on Earth. Then I failed to follow up.

Orientale Basin on the Moon as seen in LROC wide-angle mosaic

A bull's eye on the Moon

Orientale is the youngest large impact basin on the Moon, which means that very little of it has been obliterated by later impacts.

All asteroids and comets visited by spacecraft as of June 2010

How does Lutetia compare to the other asteroids and comets visited by spacecraft?

Almost a week after Rosetta flew past Lutetia, the asteroid is now a distant pinprick of light to the spacecraft, and the science team is getting down to the business of analyzing their data.

Cassini eyes Janus

Four times a year, the Cassini mission releases three months' worth of data gathered from Saturn and its moons to NASA's Planetary Data System.

3D Anaglyph: Troughs or vents in Cerberus Fossae?

OK, it's time to look silly in your red-blue glasses again! When Tanya Harrison sent me those awesome 3D views of Olympica Fossae from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's CTX camera, she sent me two other sets of 3D landscapes on Mars.

Rosetta's Lutetia pictures

I saw these pictures for the first time just 10 minutes before boarding my flight back home, and forced myself to download everything I could find as quickly as possible without pausing to actually look at them.

Lutetia -- and Saturn!!

A quick post of just one of the gorgeous images from Rosetta's flyby of Lutetia today; for more, see the Rosetta Blog. But this one was just too pretty to wait for.

Rosetta Lutetia flyby successful; approach images posted; high-res images yet to come

All appears to be going very smoothly on Rosetta through, and after, its flyby today of asteroid (21) Lutetia.

Sharpest-ever images of Daphnis

As promised last week, Cassini has delivered its best photos yet of the tiny moon Daphnis, the ringmoon that is responsible for carving out the skinny Keeler gap at the outer edge of Saturn's A ring.