Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Engineers have shifted NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft into a mode that transmits only spacecraft health and status data while they diagnose an unexpected change in the pattern of returning data.

Emily Lakdawalla

Just a linky post today, as I am nanny-less.

Marc Rayman

Dawn remains on course and on schedule for its appointments with Vesta and Ceres, colossal protoplanets in the main asteroid belt.

Emily Lakdawalla

There's one new mission and two promoted ones in this month's roundup: I've added JAXA's Akatsuki Venus Climate Orbiter for the first time, and both Hayabusa and Rosetta have been promoted from the

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rovers' fourth Martian winter is proving to be the harshest one yet and Spirit and Opportunity are getting colder than ever before. With temperatures on the Red Planet dropping in April and the Martian winter solstice still two weeks away, the season has turned into a shivering nail-biter.

Emily Lakdawalla

Either Spirit is the longest-lived landed Mars mission ever, or she is not. We won't know for certain unless we manage to observe a radio signal from her.

Emily Lakdawalla

A successful sample return for the Hayabusa mission will mean the fiery death of Mr. Hayabusa himself. The poignancy of this is not lost upon the people in Japan who are following the mission.

Emily Lakdawalla

JAXA has issued a notice with a little bit more detail on the timeline for Hayabusa's return to Earth.

Emily Lakdawalla

It really looks like Hayabusa is going to make it home. Hayabusa's sample return capsule will be returning to Earth on June 13, 2010, landing in the Woomera Prohibited Area, Australia at about 14:00 UTC.

Emily Lakdawalla

After three listening campaigns taking place from January through April, Mars Odyssey has detected no signal from Phoenix.

Emily Lakdawalla

The first of what will be five trajectory correction maneuvers (TCMs) is

Emily Lakdawalla

Spirit had been communicating on a once-per-week schedule in recent weeks. During the designated time for the rover to communicate with NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter passing overhead on March 30, Odyssey heard nothing from the rover.

Emily Lakdawalla

This month, we can expect lots of cool images of icy moons from Cassini, which will have close encounters with Dione and Enceladus, and more distant encounters with nearly every other iceball flying around the Saturn system inside Titan's orbit.

A.J.S. Rayl

March seems to have come in like a lamb and gone out like a lion on the Red Planet this year as the Mars Exploration Rovers trudged deeper into their fourth winter. While Opportunity finished up work at Concepcin Crater and shifted into gear back on the road to Endeavour Crater, Spirit finished up winter preparations and carried out a limited winter agenda before shifting, it appears, into hibernation mode.

Marc Rayman

Our interplanetary adventurer still has a great deal of ion thrusting to complete before it can begin its orbital exploration of Vesta next year.

Emily Lakdawalla

I heard some absolutely terrific news about the MSL mission yesterday.

Emily Lakdawalla

Hayabusa's mission team has successfully shifted the little spacecraft's approach trajectory from the day side to the night side of Earth, a critical maneuver for the survival of the sample return capsule.

Emily Lakdawalla

I saw this image at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference so am happy they released it: a view of Opportunity sitting on the north rim of the little, fresh Concepción crater, taken on sol 2153 (February 13, 2010).

Emily Lakdawalla

An update on Hayabusa posted to the JAXA website by project manager Junichiro Kawaguchi.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Akatsuki spacecraft (also known as PLANET-C or Venus Climate Orbiter) arrived this evening, Japanese time, at the Tanegashima Space Center.