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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Funpost! We both began to giggle like school children
NASA astronaut Scott Tingle describes his first rocket launch.
Is NASA painting itself into a corner with its ISS transition plans?
By 2025, NASA wants to create a new humans-in-LEO market, and then become the non-primary customer for that new market.
Fire at ISRO's Space Application Centre
Two weeks ago, Indian media reported a fire at the Space Application Centre (SAC) of ISRO in the city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Although it was a big fire, it was in an isolated building and no spacecraft was damaged.
An 'Exploration Exhibition' to launch the new Planetary Science Caucus
We helped launch the new Planetary Science Congressional Caucus in Washington, D.C., with an exploration exhibition to highlight the range of academic, scientific, and industry partners engaging in planetary exploration. Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye and its Board of Directors were there to welcome members of Congress and hundreds of staff and policy experts.
Book Excerpt: The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the radioisotope power system works
Readers, colleagues, friends: it's finally happened. My first book is finally out in the world. Here's an excerpt that explains the design and operation of Curiosity's MMRTG, (it also applies to the future Mars 2020 rover power supply).
Juno meets Cassini: A new merged global map of Jupiter
The Juno spacecraft that is currently orbiting Jupiter has obtained the first good images of Jupiter's polar regions. I am presenting here a combined global map of Jupiter, made from a Cassini map I made for the equatorial and temperate regions and polar maps made from the Juno JunoCam and JIRAM polar images.
Juno's 12th perijove in lifelike color
With the help of some preprocessing of JunoCam images by Mattias Malmer, Don Davis shows us how Jupiter might have looked on April 1, 2018, if we'd been aboard Juno.
LightSail 2 launch slips to Fall
The second flight of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket is now scheduled for no earlier than October 30, 2018.
Funpost! Someone is stealing the Enterprise
An appreciation for a scene from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
Philae science results: Comet 67P is crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside
What is the surface of a comet like? That's one of the main questions that motivated Philae's mission to the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. We now know the comet has a rigid crust about 10 to 50 centimeters thick, below which the comet is much more fluffy.
Refreshing the Viking Orbiter views of Mars
Justin Cowart reprocesses Viking Orbiter images from the 1970s and 1980s to reveal their unique and beautiful perspectives on the planet.
Go Atlas, go Centaur, go InSight!
NASA’s next Mars mission launched successfully from Vandenberg Air Force Base today!
The Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Studies Mystery Rock, Mission Officials Seek 2019 Extension
Opportunity spent April further exploring the area about halfway down Perseverance Valley, checking out unusual, vesicular or pitted rocks the likes of which she has never seen, while officials prepared the mission’s bid to keep the robot field geologist roving through 2019.
A brief history of Resource Prospector, NASA's cancelled lunar mission
The mission survived NASA's Journey to Mars era, only to be axed once short-term goals shifted back to the Moon.
A Comet or Titan: The Next New Frontiers Mission
Both would do compelling science in the mid-2030s. Otherwise the two missions could not be more different.
MarCO: CubeSats to Mars!
MarCO or Mars Cube One is an experimental mission that is sending two tiny spacecraft along with InSight to Mars. If successful, they will relay real-time telemetry from InSight to Earth during the landing.
An update on the potential habitability of TRAPPIST-1
One year ago, Franck Marchis wrote an article about the remarkable discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system. Here's an update.
Space Policy & Advocacy Program Quarterly Report - April 2018
The Planetary Society's Space Policy and Advocacy team publishes quarterly reports on their activities, actions, priorities, and goals in service of their efforts to promote space science and exploration in Washington, D.C.
‘SuperCam’ Update: Multi-purpose Instrument Coming Together for 2020 Launch to Mars
Excitement is building within the SuperCam team as the instrument enters the final stages of assembly and testing toward an anticipated launch aboard NASA’s Mars 2020 rover.
The Mars Exploration Rovers Update Special Report: Perseverance Science So Far, New View of Endeavour at LPSC 2018
For the 15th year in a row, Opportunity drove into the spotlight during an afternoon session at the 49th Lunar & Planetary Science Conference.