Explore Worlds
Find Life
Defend Earth
All
All
Sun
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Mountain range on Titan
A couple of weeks ago there were press releases coming out of the American Geophysical Union meeting about the discovery of a
Saturn from above (2006)
Ever since I first read about the plans for Cassini's tour of the Saturn system I've been looking forward to the current phase of the mission.
New Horizons spots Pluto!
Yesterday the New Horizons team released a flicker animation showing the spacecraft's first sight of Pluto, using the LORRI long-range imaging instrument.
Cassini's view from the backside of Saturn
Over time, Cassini's orbit apoapsis—the point on the orbit that is farthest from Saturn—has been shifting slowly toward Saturn's night side. Lately, this point of view has resulted in some truly lovely photos of the planet.
They released the entire Cassini RADAR swath across Xanadu!
Following immediately on the heels of the release of the
Cassini's T7 RADAR view of southern Titan; northern swath coming soon
Cassini's T7 flyby of Titan occurred on September 7, 2005. They've now released the full swath of RADAR image data to the Planetary Data System; here it is for your enjoyment.
The official publication on the second Titan RADAR swath is out
Today Nature published an article titled
A couple of neat artist's conceptions of ExoMars
With the Aurora program under way, the next European mission to Mars will be a rover named ExoMars, to be launched in 2011.
An Odyssey THEMIS image of Gale Crater, Mars
This week's releases from the Mars Odyssey THEMIS team included a gorgeous one of the layered interior of Gale crater.
Cassini RADAR: Another Flyby, Another Completely Different View of Titan
OK, I finally got a story written about the latest and greatest of the Cassini RADAR data based upon a conversation I had with with Ralph Lorenz late last week.
Cassini RADAR images of the surface of Titan
Since the last Titan flyby on April 30, the Cassini RADAR team has been releasing quite a large number of pieces of the swath to the Web.
Get used to this view
Get used to this view of Home Plate and Husband Hill, because Spirit will be seeing a lot of it over the next 8 months, whenever power levels permit the rover to eke a little bit of science activity out of the day.
Cassini is wrapping up another Titan flyby
This one is
Many, many views of Saturn's moons
Another thing I've been trying to catch up on is the daily imaging activities of Cassini, but that, too, has been tough because Cassini has been taking so dang many pictures!
The Orbital Dance of Epimetheus and Janus
Saturn is surrounded by a crowded family of rings and moons, and two of those moons -- Epimetheus and Janus -- orbit Saturn so close together that it seems as though their different orbital speeds should make them crash into each other.
Cassini, Day By Day
I've just resurrected a feature on the site that has been lost since our redesign: the
Pretty Cassini pictures from near the ring plane
It's been a while since I posted some Cassini pictures here just because they were pretty.
Cassini Photographs the Fountains of Enceladus (and gets pics of Tethys, Janus, Epimetheus, and the G ring too)
Emily tackles this morning's ESA press conference about Huygens.
A fun picture for holiday travel
A fun NASA explainer just crossed my email inbox and I thought I'd share it.
Closer still to Itokawa
Hayabusa reached an altitude of about 560 meters above Hayabusa at 17:30 UTC. And at 18:00 UTC they are at 500 meters. This is still farther above the asteroid than the asteroid is big...there is still a long way to go before Hayabusa touches down...