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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Dec. 17, 2009 | 06:49 PST | 14:49 UTC
Hayabusa on the home stretch
Hayabusa is still 100 million kilometers from the Earth, less than an astronomical unit away but still with months to travel. But according to an update posted to their website this morning by project manager Junichiro Kawaguchi, Hayabusa is on the... More»
Dec. 16, 2009 | 14:28 PST | 22:28 UTC
Planetary Society Advent Calendar for December 16: Mimas
Mimas is the anti-Enceladus. At 397 kilometers in diameter it is not all that much smaller than 512-kilometer Enceladus, the next biggish moon out. But its ancient, cratered surface tells you that nothing particularly exciting has happened there... More»
Dec. 16, 2009 | 12:01 PST | 20:01 UTC
Two cool discoveries today: icy-hot exoplanet and smallest ever Kuiper Belt object
There are two cool stories circulating today on the theme of discovering new places in the cosmos. The first one is from the European Southern Observatory and concerns the extrasolar planet known as GJ 1214b, located in our relative backyard, only... More»
Dec. 16, 2009 | 09:21 PST | 17:21 UTC
Downloading the "How to work with Mars Express VMC images" class
Here's the information on how to watch the class on how to work with Mars Express VMC images, which I conducted to a small audience this morning.
Go to the Space Imaging section of our website, to the Tutorials page, and follow the links to the... More»
Dec. 15, 2009 | 14:05 PST | 22:05 UTC
Class announcement: How to play with Mars Express VMC images
Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I've been fiddling with images from the Mars Webcam, more officially known as the Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC), for the last couple of weeks. This camera is both awful and awesome. It... More»
Dec. 15, 2009 | 11:40 PST | 19:40 UTC
Planetary Society Advent Calendar for December 15: Mars
We have three orbiters and two rovers currently exploring Mars, each of which returns breathtaking photos on a daily basis. (Well, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter hasn't been returning photos for months, but yesterday I learned via Twitter that the... More»
Dec. 15, 2009 | 10:25 PST | 18:25 UTC
No, they can't push with the arm to free Spirit
I've gotten this question about once a week since Spirit got stuck, but yesterday, two different readers asked the same question within an hour of each other, so I figured it was time for a blog entry.
The question: Can't they use the robotic arm... More»
Dec. 14, 2009 | 12:12 PST | 20:12 UTC
A teeny weeny bit of movement in Spirit's right front wheel
The ever-vigilant Doug Ellison of unmannedspaceflight.com just posted this animation, which really actually does show a teeny tiny bit of motion in the right front wheel. If you don't notice any motion, look closer. It's eensy, but it's there. ... More»
Dec. 14, 2009 | 10:09 PST | 18:09 UTC
Planetary Society Advent Calendar for December 14: The Moon
The Moon is the most familiar of the objects in the heavens. So it's kind of incredible to think about the fact that humans had never seen half of it until just fifty years ago, on October 7, 1959, when the Soviet Luna-3 returned the first images... More»
Dec. 14, 2009 | 09:22 PST | 17:22 UTC
Congratulations to the WISE team on a successful launch!
It was worth my while to get up at 5:15 my time this morning -- I saw a flawless launch of a Delta II from Vandenberg Air Force Base, carrying the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) into orbit. As I've described before in this space, WISE... More»
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