Articles

Jason Davis

After much anticipation, Elon Musk revealed his plans to colonize Mars. Here are the details, some questions yet to be answered, and a few thoughts on how this could change the way we think about human spaceflight.

Emily Lakdawalla

A schedule of what to expect during Rosetta's final hours September 29 and 30, and how you can follow online.

Casey Dreier

New scientific findings add to the evidence that Europa is spouting its liquid ocean into space. NASA has a mission to Europa in the works, but it wouldn't launch for at least a decade. Congress can make it faster, but it all depends on whether they can pass a budget this year.

Emily Lakdawalla

Juno is on its second of two long orbits around Jupiter, reaching apojove (its farthest distance from the planet) today.

Emily Lakdawalla

Interested in playing with recent space image data? Here's a list of places to get the freshest photos from space.

Jason Davis

We're back from our #RocketRoadTrip through four states with NASA field centers involved in the agency's Journey to Mars program. We'll be sorting through our material for quite some time, but meanwhile, here are five key things we learned.

Emily Lakdawalla

Beautiful new amateur work with 27-year-old Voyager data.

Casey Dreier

After 10 days, four NASA centers, two contractors, and hundreds of miles, Casey Dreier shares his initial reflections on the state of NASA's Space Launch System rocket and its future.

Julie Rathbun

How far have we come and how far do we still need to go to welcome women into planetary science, and, particularly, spacecraft missions?

Emily Lakdawalla

Today, China launched its second modular space station, Tiangong 2.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini ends a year from today, which is sad. But the final year of the mission is going to be awesome.

Emily Lakdawalla

The astronomy world is abuzz today because of ESA's announcement of the first release of data from the Gaia mission. Gaia is a five-year mission that will eventually measure the positions and motions of billions of stars; this first data release includes positions for 1.1 billion of them, and proper motions for 2 million.

Björn Jónsson

A few weeks before the first Juno high resolution imaging, I decided to take a look at Voyager color images at various resolutions, with particular attention to high-resolution mosaics.

Emily Lakdawalla

Titan's north polar lakes are well-lit by summer sun in these recent Cassini images. Image processing enthusiast Ian Regan shares his recipe for processing the longer-wavelength Titan images into visually pleasing

Emily Lakdawalla

The European Space Agency has shared plans for the end of the Rosetta mission scheduled for September 30, just three weeks from now. The landing site will be located on the

Larry Crumpler

Opportunity is about to leave Marathon Valley for good and head south into the next valley, marking the beginning of the current extended mission plan.

Jason Davis

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is safely en route to asteroid Bennu following an evening liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Jason Davis

OSIRIS-REx is ready to begin its journey to Bennu and back. The asteroid was named by a Planetary Society contest winner, and the spacecraft bears the names of 440,000 well-wishers.

Emily Lakdawalla

Ever since its landing, Philae has been elusive. It went silent just three days later and never returned any more science data, though it made brief contact with the orbiter last summer. Now, just a month until the planned end of the Rosetta mission, the orbiter has finally located the lander in a stunning high-resolution view of the surface.

A.J.S. Rayl

Opportunity got in the groove at Endeavour Crater in August finishing the last of her science assignments in Marathon Valley.