Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

As MESSENGER zoomed toward Mercury for its third flyby, it was commanded to rotate in a maneuver that would help it test a surprising result from the second flyby.

Marc Rayman

Dawn has devoted another month to thrusting with its ion propulsion system, ever with its sights set on its rendezvous with Vesta in July 2011.

A.J.S. Rayl

The Mars Exploration Rover mission logged another textbook-rewriting month in October 2009 with more discoveries of geologic gems, new robot achievements balanced with equal amounts of challenges and frustrations overcome, topped off with special honors.

Emily Lakdawalla

There are two -- actually three -- big things to look forward to this month.

Charlene Anderson

News from 7.2 billion light years away demonstrates that some things in this shifting universe are relatively reliable.

Emily Lakdawalla

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been in safe mode for nine weeks, since August 26, the date of the fourth in a series of safing events.

Emily Lakdawalla

Heads up! ESA's Rosetta comet-chasing mission is going to buzz by Earth again in less than a month.

Emily Lakdawalla

Quite a night! I set my alarm for 3:15 am in order to get up and watch LCROSS crash into the Moon.

Emily Lakdawalla

This plot just shows the aggregate radiance in ultraviolet and visible wavelengths -- all wavelengths -- seen by one of LCROSS' spectrometers after the Centaur hit the Moon.

Emily Lakdawalla

So the big drama on LCROSS is over.

Emily Lakdawalla

Way early tomorrow morning, LCROSS and its Centaur upper stage will crash into the lunar south pole.

Emily Lakdawalla

LCROSS and its Centaur upper stage have separated successfully, and the LCROSS shepherd spacecraft has braked in order to follow behind the Centaur when both impact the Moon tomorrow.

Emily Lakdawalla

The caption to today's image release from the MESSENGER team concerns their long-term campaign to study Mercury's brightness through a range of phase angles.

Emily Lakdawalla

What's up in the solar system in October 2009

A.J.S. Rayl

From notable achievements and new discoveries to trials and tribulations and harbingers of hope, the Mars Exploration Rovers seemed to experience the gamut on the Red Planet this September, their 69th month on an expedition that originally set out back in 2004 for a three-month tour.

Marc Rayman

Dawn is celebrating the second anniversary of leaving its home planet by engaging in the same function it has performed most of its time in space: with the utmost patience, it is using its ion propulsion system to gradually modify its orbit around the Sun.

Emily Lakdawalla

MESSENGER is fast approaching the third and final Mercury flyby during its seven-year journey to the innermost planet.

Bruce Betts

Today, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, decided to delay from 2009 to 2011 the launch of the Phobos Grunt mission to study and return samples from the Martian moon Phobos.

Emily Lakdawalla

For a while, Mars was beating Spirit while she was down, throwing a dust storm at the rover where it's bogged up to its hubcaps in fluffy soil When lots of dust is lofted into the sky, the hazard is that when it comes down, it may come down on the rover and its solar panels. But it appears things on Spirit are still pretty clean.

Marc Rayman

As Dawn continues its long solar system journey to match orbits with Vesta and later with Ceres, some readers may note a surprising trend in the statistics for the mission.