Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Unaffected by the shutdown of the U.S. government, New Horizons is still on course for its New Year’s encounter with 2014 MU69 (nicknamed “Ultima Thule”). This post collects the latest images from New Horizons' approach to the tiny Kuiper belt object and will be updated regularly.

Ted Stryk

Ted Stryk shows us a new color, near-global view of Europa made from Galileo spacecraft data captured in 1996.

Emily Lakdawalla

New Horizons is rapidly approaching its New Year’s encounter with the most distant world ever visited, 2014 MU69. Closest approach will be at a distance of 3,500 kilometers at about 05:33 on 1 January UTC.

Emily Lakdawalla

Voyager 2 is now outside the reach of the solar wind, traveling in the interstellar medium. Unlike Voyager 1, Voyager 2 has a working plasma spectrometer so will be doing exciting new science. It is expected to last another 5 to 10 years, though not with all instruments operating.

Ian Regan

Ian Regan, producer of the Titan segment of In Saturn's Rings, describes the meticulous process of creating the stunning visuals of this shrouded moon.

Jason Davis

On Jan. 1, NASA's New Horizons will perform a high-risk, high-reward flyby of an ancient world on the outskirts of the solar system.

Emily Lakdawalla

Both OSIRIS-REx and New Horizons achieved first light on their still-distant targets this week. Between now and the end of 2018, Bennu and 2014 MU69 will turn from points of light into places.

Jason Davis

Let's check in on NASA's Juno spacecraft, which completed its 14th close flyby of Jupiter last month.

Emily Lakdawalla

One of the Cassini mission's goals was to figure out how long a day on Saturn is. We still don't know. A new paper reports a measurement of the rotation period of Saturn that is different from past measurements.

Emily Lakdawalla

Seán Doran has made a cool visual index to the images that JunoCam took during Juno's first 12 closest approaches to Jupiter.

Björn Jónsson

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.

Emily Lakdawalla

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.

Emily Lakdawalla

Happy Monday! Here's a picture of Prometheus. You may think it's a picture of Saturn. Look hard, toward the bottom, and you'll see Prometheus, doing its part to keep the F ring in line.

Jatan Mehta

Take a look at how electronics of spacecraft are built to survive the harshness of space environments.

Björn Jónsson

The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument can obtain images in two infrared bands. JIRAM can see the nightside of Jupiter (including the winter pole) and takes spectacular animations.

Emily Lakdawalla

On this Moon Monday, I'm featuring an animation processed by Gordan Ugarkovic, showing Jupiter's volcanic moon Io with its prominent plumes.

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily's first report from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference is on the solar system's most atmospheriffic satellite, Saturn's moon Titan.

Emily Lakdawalla

To start the week, Voyager 2's best image of Tethys.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Planetary Society has always enjoyed the connections between science and art, so when I saw Leila Qışın's sketches pop up on her Twitter feed during the recent New Horizons team meeting, I knew I had to share them with you.

Emily Lakdawalla

Throughout 2018, New Horizons will cruise toward its January 1 encounter with 2014 MU69. Preparations for the flyby are nearly complete.