Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

When people first hear about how Curiosity will land on Mars, their first question always is: are they nuts? This is the first in a multi-part series describing how -- and why -- Curiosity will land this way, in excruciating detail.

Emily Lakdawalla

Just a pretty global view of one of Saturn's flock of icy moons, newly processed from archival data by Gordan Ugarkovic.

Emily Lakdawalla

This Cosmoquest Science Hangout featured Ravi Prakash, Curiosity Entry, Descent, and Landing Systems Engineer. He explained how Curiosity will land on Mars, and why they've changed things since Spirit and Opportunity landed.

Emily Lakdawalla

An interesting set of images of Titan that Cassini took recently shows a peculiar cap at Titan's south pole.

Emily Lakdawalla

I have a couple of updates on my post from yesterday: confirmation that Chang'E 2 is indeed gone from L2, and more specifics on encounter dates with Toutatis.

Emily Lakdawalla

A reader comment on Jay Pasachoff's post last week about Venus transits viewed from other planets had me asking whether transits of other planets were also interesting to astronomers. Jay provided some answers!

Emily Lakdawalla

According to a Chinese spaceflight forum, Chang'E program chief scientist Ouyang Ziyuan recently announced that Chang'E 2 has departed the Sun-Earth L2 point and is now en route to asteroid 4179 Toutatis!

Emily Lakdawalla

A notice of some new names for features on asteroid 2867 Steins inspired me to dig up the data set from the September 5, 2008 Rosetta flyby and explore it to see what it contained.

Emily Lakdawalla

NuSTAR, the most sensitive X-ray telescope ever developed, launched successfully at 16:00 UT. This was a fun launch to watch, because the launch vehicle was a Pegasus XL air-launched rocket, dropped like a bomb from open bay doors of an L-1011 airplane.

Emily Lakdawalla

Sky & Telescope and Replogle Globes teamed up to take advantage of the fabulous new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image mosaic of the Moon to make an equally fabulous new Moon globe.

Emily Lakdawalla

There was good news and bad news in this morning's press briefing about Curiosity rover's upcoming landing on Mars, just eight weeks from now. First, the good news: the landing ellipse has shrunk. The bad news: there's a contamination problem with the drill, and the Odyssey orbiter is in safe mode.

Emily Lakdawalla

Glen Nagle pointed me to two awesome papercraft models of the Curiosity rover that you can download and -- assuming you have a LOT of patience and a steady hand -- assemble.

Emily Lakdawalla

On June 6 I hosted the Cosmoquest Weekly Science Hour. My guest was Dan Durda of the Southwest Research Institute. We talked asteroids, impact mitigation, searches for Vulcanoids, and suborbital experiments, and then he took us through how he creates his digital space art.

Emily Lakdawalla

Ray Bradbury passed away last night, June 5, 2012, at the age of 91. He was a friend to the Planetary Society and an inspiration to its members. We'd like you members to share your recollections and stories of his singular influence in your lives.

Emily Lakdawalla

A measurement of the Andromeda galaxy's proper motion shows it's coming directly at us, and will collide with the Milky Way in 4 billion years. The event will transform the appearance of our night sky.

Emily Lakdawalla

This month, Opportunity is roving again, while Curiosity approaches Mars; Cassini's finally seeing rings, and will fly by Mimas, Titan, and Tethys; GRAIL has completed its primary mission and is journeying toward the second; Dawn is climbing to the HAMO2 orbit; and a rare transit of Venus is coming up on June 5/6.

Emily Lakdawalla

It was just a coincidence, but a cool one, that I got a chance to visit the Mojave Spaceport so soon after the dramatic

Emily Lakdawalla

A solar eclipse isn't just a spiffy sight to Earthlings; it looks pretty cool to lunar dwellers as well.

Emily Lakdawalla

The apparently simple device of running Cassini images together like a flipbook makes for a dramatic movie, especially with the help of well-timed musical cues.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini obtained its first high-resolution images of Methone on May 20, 2012. Methone is one of the smallest regular moons of Saturn, having a diameter of only about 3 kilometers. It was the first moon that Cassini discovered, very early in Cassini's mission at Saturn, in 2004.