Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

A recent Rosetta image has revealed a good part of the comet's previously hidden southern terrain to the public for the first time.

Richard Chute

This month, at the same time that The Planetary Society is launching the long-anticipated LightSail prototype for a shakedown cruise, we are excited to launch another “first”—our first-ever Kickstarter campaign.

Emily Lakdawalla

New Horizons has now spotted every one of Pluto's satellites...all the ones we know about, that is.

Emily Lakdawalla

PROCYON, the mini-satellite launched with Hayabusa2, will not be able to achieve its planned asteroid flyby due to the failure of its ion engine.

Van Kane

In the last two months, there has been significant news about the European-Russian 2018 mission and about NASA’s 2020 rover. NASA also has announced that it would like to send a new orbiter to the Red Planet in the early 2020s.

Jason Davis

With less than two weeks before launch, here's an in-depth look at whether the LightSail test mission's attitude control system bug will keep us from seeing pretty pictures taken by the spacecraft.

Jason Davis

United Launch Alliance has released photos showing the Air Force's X-37B spaceplane being stacked on its Atlas V at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Jason Dworkin

The nature of the origin of life is a topic that has engaged people since ancient times. The samples to be collected by OSIRIS-REx, returned to the Earth in 2023 and archived for decades beyond that, may indeed hide the secrets to the origin of life.

Jason Davis

A SpaceX Crew Dragon rocketed into the sky under its own power this morning, completing a critical milestone necessary to certify the spacecraft for crewed flights in 2017.

Damia Bouic

Long before Curiosity's landing, the description of the color camera made ​​me dream: I imagined what wonderful pictures we could get of sunsets and sunrises on Mars. They finally came on sol 956, the 15th of April, 2015.

Emily Lakdawalla

Curiosity is finally on the road again! And she's never taken a more scenic route than this. Her path to Mount Sharp is taking her to the west and south, across sandy swales between rocky rises.

Emily Lakdawalla

Now that Dawn is in its science orbit at Ceres, the mission has been releasing new images every weekday!

A.J.S. Rayl

After investigating some flat, light and dark toned rocks around Spirit of St. Louis Crater in April, Opportunity chalked up another milestone achievement – the 4000th sol or Martian day of surface operations.

Jason Davis

Despite a rainy spring that has caused schedule delays, NASA is preparing for a busy year of Space Launch System engine testing.

Casey Dreier

Casey Dreier gives a brief summary of the House draft bill released the other day that would authorize NASA funding for the years 2016 and 2017.

Emily Lakdawalla

There is one less robot exploring the solar system today. MESSENGER, which has orbited Mercury for four years, finally ran out of fuel and crashed into the planet at 17:26 UT on Thursday, April 30, 2015.

Marc Rayman

Dawn Mission Director and Chief Engineer Marc Rayman gives a status update on the mission, having finally arrived at dwarf planet Ceres.

A.J.S. Rayl

MER mission ops team members joined other engineers and scientists, some who previously worked on the MER mission, to take on the challenge of a relay marathon to celebrate Opportunity's milestone achievement.

Emily Lakdawalla

Today the European Space Agency released a ton of NavCam images, taken as the spacecraft approached and then entered orbit at the comet.

Emily Lakdawalla

Today the New Horizons team released a new animation of images taken on approach to Pluto. The animation clearly shows how Pluto wobbles around the Pluto-Charon barycenter. It also shows something more exciting to the scientists: variations in brightness across the surface of Pluto. They also began releasing raw images to the Internet.