Articles

Jason Davis

And it's only 11 light-years away.

Emily Lakdawalla

Welcome to my ninth annual recommendations and gift guide to books about space, planets, and astronauts for kids of all ages!

Jason Davis

The GMT will characterize Earth-size exoplanets' atmospheres, looking for compounds that indicate the presence of life.

Jason Davis

Asteroid hunters named the first-known interstellar asteroid ʻOumuamua as a nod to its scout-like traits.

Erin Greeson

The Planetary Society’s 2017 journey to Australia expanded our perspective, advocacy and global community. It was rich with reminders close to Carl Sagan’s heart: We are all connected through time, humankind, and our origins in the stars.

Marc Rayman

Building on the successes of its primary mission and its first extended mission, NASA has approved the veteran explorer for a second extended mission.

Elsa Jensen

It takes hundreds of scientists and engineers many years to design and build just one instrument for a Mars mission. In the first Mastcam-Z team blog post, we'll talk about the special challenges we expect for Mars 2020 operations, and how we're planning to overcome them.

A.J.S. Rayl

As brutally cold got even colder at Endeavour Crater in October, the depths of winter gripped Opportunity, and ‘life’ on Mars slowed. But the robot field geologist continued to work on through the doldrums of the season.

Jason Davis

Republicans and Democrats spent nearly 3 hours showering Bridenstine with both praise and criticism.

Casey Dreier

The Planetary Society likes to look ahead, and in that spirit we organized a reception at the Library of Congress to bring scientists, legislators, and their staff together to honor Cassini and get excited about our future in the outer planets.

Emily Lakdawalla

Today's story from the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting looks at one youthful rayed crater on the Moon from many different spacecraft.

Stephanie Hamilton

What have we learned about the distant objects in our Solar System beyond Neptune in the past year?

Emily Lakdawalla

Google Maps released several new map products that allow you to see the locations of named features on many solar system planets and non-planets, spinning them around in space with your mouse.

Jason Davis

The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft is in a flight-ready state, marking a major milestone for the program.

Jason Davis

The Planetary Society has supported SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, practically since our founding in 1980. Learn the past, present, and future of SETI.

Emily Lakdawalla

James Tuttle Keane is increasingly famous (among planetary scientists anyway) for his remarkable illustrated notes from conferences. Here's his work from the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting, illustrating both his own and others' research.

Emily Lakdawalla

Three years ago, on October 19, 2014, comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring passed within 138,000 kilometers of Mars. At the 2017 meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, we heard a progress report on Mars orbiter imaging of the comet's nucleus.

Jason Callahan

Planetary Society Policy Adviser Jason Callahan summarizes his paper he presented at the 2017 International Astronautical Congress in Australia, where he examined NASA's low-cost Discovery program and how federal policies directed at higher education initially bolstered planetary science into a viable field.

Jason Davis

Haumea has a ring! Two telescopes used in the discovery—one in Slovenia, and one in Italy—received funding from The Planetary Society's Shoemaker Near Earth Object (NEO) Grant program, which helps amateur astronomers find, track and characterize near-Earth asteroids.

Ian Regan

Amateur image processor Ian Regan shares the story of processing Cassini's final images of the ringed planet.