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Small BodiesStories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
This is how far human radio broadcasts have reached into the galaxy
There is an ever-expanding bubble announcing Humanity's presence to anyone listening in the Milky Way.
The Scale of the Universe, by Cary and Michael Huang
Cary and Michael Huang present a basic
Put New Horizons on a stamp
A week ago, the New Horizons team announced an effort to gather signatures in support of a petition to the U.S. Postal Service to commemorate the historic flyby of Pluto on a stamp.
A shooting star is not a star at all
They Might Be Giants present
Geek craft: GRAIL twins Ebb and Flow in plastic canvas
Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that after beginning with Dawn last week, I've kept my fingers busy, stitching more spacecraft from plastic canvas. I now have prototypes for GRAIL, New Horizons, and MESSENGER.
Stephen Hawking's Curios
Catching up on my blog reading today, I turned to
Watch this week's Google+ Space Hangout
This week's lineup is a largely astronomical crowd so most of the conversation concerned dark matter and boiling exoplanets and imaging the black hole at the center of our galaxy.
The Dawn spacecraft, modeled in an unlikely medium
Last week when I joined the new weekly Space Hangout (a webcast video conference call of sorts), I realized I would need a 3D model of Dawn in order to explain what's going on with the mission right now.
Happy LPSC Deadline Day, especially to composers of abstract haiku
January 10, 2012 was a high-stress day for many in the world of planetary geology: the deadline for submission of abstracts for the 2012 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC). One creative coping mechanism for the stress of completing the LPSC abstract submission process is the tradition of capturing the essence of one's work in the seventeen syllables of the Haiku form.
Project for Awesome Video On Behalf of the Planetary Society
WhirledSol posted a cool Youtube tribute to the Planetary Society a year ago, and we just now found it! It has a nice explanation of why we are so passionate about space exploration.
MalloMars Rover: Search for S'more Data
Abigail Fraeman took third place in the Washington Post's 2011 Style Invitational edible-art contest with her entry,
One-astronaut game of baseball in the International Space Station
A fun video of Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa playing baseball aboard the ISS.
Photos: Preparations for Curiosity's launch proceeding (don't show these to Blofeld!)
Kennedy Space Center has recently created a photo album collecting their photos from the clean rooms where technicians are working madly to prepare the Curiosity Mars rover for launch.
Rapping the elements, by Oortkuiper
This is a bit of a departure from space science, but was so awesome, I had to share. I've always loved Tom Lehrer's
Spiffy human spaceflight T-shirt!
From Chop Shop, the same guys who brought you my favorite space T-shirt ever, there is now a very cool shirt celebrating the spacecraft and missions of 50 years of human spaceflight, and as before they're donating five bucks to the Planetary Society for every T-shirt sold.
The Spirit Rover, and Why Cuteness Matters
There is something about the Spirit Mars rover, something that tugs at our hearts. I finally figured it out: it's cute.
Having some fun with Curiosity's pretty face (plus, a conversation about Curiosity with a 4-year-old)
The photo I took of Curiosity's
Encouragement from space for Japan
I saw this posted by @Akatsuki_JAXA (the Akatsuki Venus mission's official Twitter identity) and thought it was cute so I'm sharing it here.
Happy Valentine's Day from Mars
I dug around and found something unique: this cool heart-shaped feature on Mars -- my Valentine to you all!
A Worldwide Game of "Telephone" Distorts NASA Meeting
In the last couple of weeks, media outlets around the world have been reporting that NASA recently convened a private meeting at JPL to identify the worst movies ever made, scientifically speaking. It seemed like a good story. The problem was that it wasn't true.