Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

This item is a little bit old -- I missed it when it was announced last Monday. ESA issued a press release stating that

Emily Lakdawalla

Last week's Cassini Significant Events Report included a detailed play-by-play of the frightening morning of Mayday. I thought it was a very interesting read on how a mission deals with an

Emily Lakdawalla

The Outer Planets Assessment Group opened with the status of two of the three actual outer planets missions, Cassini and Juno.

Emily Lakdawalla

Since January 1, 2004—the beginning of the Saturn phase of the mission—Cassini has radioed almost 139 Gigabytes of science data to Earth.

A.J.S. Rayl

Two years and 3 months after they bounced to landings at Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum, the Mars Exploration Rovers are heading into their second, long cold Martian winter.

Emily Lakdawalla

Today is the day that New Horizons passes Mars' orbit (not that Mars is anywhere close to New Horizons right now).

A.J.S. Rayl

As autumn falls toward winter on the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, the Mars Exploration Rovers are on the move again. Although the twin robot field geologists are roving as quickly as possible to their next major destinations, the pace is slowing down.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini planner Dave Seal gave me a newly updated list of times and dates for Cassini's ongoing tour of the Saturn system, so I went through and compared my table to his and made updates to flyby distances.

Emily Lakdawalla

A news update from the MESSENGER mission last Friday included a news item that piqued my interest: they reported that the MESSENGER science team website is now live.

Emily Lakdawalla

They held the usual pre-arrival press conference this morning for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This press conference typically doesn't convey any information that people who have been paying attention don't already know.

A.J.S. Rayl

As early autumn descends on the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, the Mars Exploration Rovers are on the move and picking up the pace as they rove toward their next major destinations.

A.J.S. Rayl

As the Mars Exploration Rover mission presses onward into its third Earth year -- and second Mars year -- the twin robot field geologists are moving to new destinations.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's in space, of course, and has a very, very long way to go to Pluto (nearly 50 billion kilometers). But it's finally more than 1 Astronomical Unit from the Sun.

Emily Lakdawalla

I received a lot of email over the weekend about New Horizons. Many of them were expressing concern about how little news there has been since launch. Have no fear.

Emily Lakdawalla

So the Stardust press conference is still going on on NASA TV, but I am now turning to the Internet to monitor the status of New Horizons' third attempted launch day.

Emily Lakdawalla

I am updating this as I take notes from the press conference.

John Spencer

We just got back from the real post-launch party, following two non-post-launch parties on the last two evenings. This was more like it.

Emily Lakdawalla

I was looking at that table of launch times for New Horizons and realized that the table included another valuable column of data that I hadn't noticed before: it tells you what year New Horizons will arrive, for each of the possible launch dates.

Emily Lakdawalla

Well, it was a nail-biting morning and too bad that New Horizons didn't go but these things happen pretty frequently.

John Spencer

Oh well, the Sun sets on an earthbound New Horizons at least one more time. The first day's launch attempt was a strange experience in retrospect.