Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Dec 15, 2009, 9:25 am
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 e...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Dec 14, 2009, 11:12 am
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 ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Dec 14, 2009, 9:09 am
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, 195...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Dec 14, 2009, 8:22 am
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...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Dec 13, 2009, 2:35 pm
If you don't think Pluto gets enough respect, just imagine what it's like to be a satellite of an asteroid. That is way, way down in the solar system food chain, the last thing anybody will c...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Dec 13, 2009, 12:41 pm
By Charlene M. Anderson In our continuing saga of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), the scene now switches from Copenhagen to Washington, D.C. This week, a conference committee, made up of mem...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Dec 12, 2009, 1:17 pm
I've grown used to Saturn over the last five-plus years. Cassini's amazing cameras have set a new standard for the quality, sharpness, resolution, beautiful color, and all-around spectacularn...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 19, 2009, 1:54 pm
UPDATE 7 p.m. PST: It seems there was a bit more downward motion than I detected. The JPL update says:Spirit successfully completed the first step of its planned two-step motion on Sol 2090 (Nov. 19...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 19, 2009, 11:49 am
I probably crammed too much into today's class: an hour-and-a-half whirlwind tour through the cameras on the rovers and Cassini, how to access their raw images on the Internet, and some basic proc...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 19, 2009, 9:08 am
The class is going on now (10:30-11:30 PST / 18:30-19:30 UTC). To join: 1. Go to this site. 2. Enter your name and email address. 3. Enter the meeting password: imaging 4. Click "Join Now". I ha...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 19, 2009, 8:16 am
Ideally, you'd like to have a space mission that faces no problems. But in the real world, spacecraft run into trouble. Trouble has come time and again to JAXA's little Hayabusa asteroid sam...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 18, 2009, 1:58 pm
Since tomorrow's class is going to be on playing with raw images from the rovers and Cassini, I've been playing with recent raw images from the rovers and Cassini! I just thought I'd shar...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 18, 2009, 1:47 pm
Planetary Society volunteer Ken Kremer is reporting for us from the Kennedy Space Center, where he watched the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on Monday, November 16. Kremer is a research scientist a...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 18, 2009, 8:28 am
The second installment in my classes on space imaging for armchair explorers will be tomorrow, Thursday, at 10:30 PST / 18:30 UTC. Send me an email if you'd like the link and password to attend l...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 17, 2009, 12:20 pm
EDIT: JPL's update for today indicates the drive stopped after less than 1 second of driving because it sensed its tilt was out of the tightly specified parameters, which would explain why there a...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 16, 2009, 11:48 am
Having suffered a brief setback at the hands (teeth?) of the neighborhood squirrels who chewed through my cable line last week, I finally prevailed in hosting the first in my series of classes on proc...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 16, 2009, 11:16 am
by Bruce Betts The Leonid meteor shower peaks on Tuesday, November 17. The Leonids are a highly variable shower, and as such are a bit of a gamble on what you'll see. Could be great, could be s...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 13, 2009, 6:44 pm
Rosetta appears to have operated flawlessly as it streaked past Earth for its flyby early this morning. Here are a few more gems from the flyby. First is an actual sighting of the Rosetta spacecraft...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 13, 2009, 2:33 pm
by Susan Lendroth The Planetary Society's new solar sail project -- LightSail -- has generated headlines and hundreds of news stories since it was announced on Monday. Read a few of the coverage...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 13, 2009, 12:55 pm
I just posted (actually, another TPS staffer just posted for me, for which I'm thankful) a story on the announcement today that LCROSS definitely found lots of water in the spectra from their Octo...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 13, 2009, 10:29 am
Planetary Society volunteer Ken Kremer is reporting for us from the Kennedy Space Center, where he will watch the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis set for Monday, November 16. Kremer is a research sci...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 12, 2009, 4:37 pm
by Susan Lendroth Mirror-bright and shaped like a kite, LightSail will orbit Earth on the pressure of sunlight alone. Our Executive Director Lou Friedman joins host Ira Flatow on NPR's Science Fr...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 12, 2009, 1:45 pm
Via the USGS I learned that Jupiter has passed a milestone of sorts, and now has fifty named satellites. The fiftieth is Herse, a 2000-meter-diameter rock orbiting 22 million kilometers from Jupiter ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 12, 2009, 11:26 am
NOTE: Due to problems with my Internet service, I had to postpone the class, and don't know yet when I'll be able to reschedule it. Sorry!If you have sent me an email asking to register for t...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 6, 2009, 1:14 pm
I got a huge response from readers interested in me conducting some online classes on space image data -- how to access and process it. Some of you are interested just in being armchair explorers, bu...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 5, 2009, 6:32 pm
While I was on maternity leave I suddenly decided to see what books were out there that could help me teach my daughters (one's three years, and the other six months old) about the science and the...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 4, 2009, 1:14 pm
Before I get to this week's Q and A, I should mention that the Carnival of Space can be found over at the Next Big Future. This week's Planetary Radio features Lou Friedman on the Augustine H...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 4, 2009, 1:02 pm
I've forgotten to post Planetary Radio Q and A for the past few weeks, so I'll post a couple today. Planetary Radio for October 19 featured Bruce Murray on the persistence and importance of ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 3, 2009, 12:46 pm
Yesterday, the Japanese space agency announced the public release of the data from the primary mission of the Kaguya (a.k.a. SELENE) lunar orbiter. The release covers the period from December 21, 200...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 3, 2009, 9:21 am
This image goodie was produced from the raw images from Cassini's close encounter with Saturn's geyser moon Enceladus yesterday by Gordan Ugarkovic. At the time that this photo was taken, Cas...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 2, 2009, 8:10 pm
Just as all the American space buffs were preparing for bed (and after Europeans should have been asleep), raw images from Cassini's close pass by Enceladus today started appearing on the JPL raw ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 2, 2009, 8:32 am
Here's our monthly checkup with the Dawn mission, contributed by Marc Rayman, the mission's Project System Engineer. Thanks Marc! --ESLClick to enlarge >Marc RaymanBy Marc Rayman Dear Dawn-o&...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 31, 2009, 5:08 pm
Enjoy tonight's nearly-full Moon! I couldn't resist posting these snapshots that Alice Wessen took of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's costume contest. There were many costumes that were ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 30, 2009, 9:19 am
Peekaboo! Cassini recently captured a series of images documenting Rhea passing behind Titan. I love how Titan's smog discolors Rhea's surface. Though, to be honest, the color in this image...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 29, 2009, 2:59 pm
There are two -- actually three -- big things to look forward to this month. We have a double event to look forward to on Cassini: a pair of ultra-close Enceladus flybys spaced only 19 days apart, on...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 29, 2009, 10:34 am
by Charlene Anderson News from 7.2 billion light years away demonstrates that some things in this shifting universe are relatively reliable. We can still count on Einstein and his explanation of spac...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 28, 2009, 11:51 am
The LROC team posted today a new image of the Apollo 17 landing site, captured after Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter had gotten in to its 50-kilometer mapping orbit, so this is much more detailed than th...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 28, 2009, 11:30 am
These Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE images of the defunct Phoenix lander in the early dawn light of northern spring have been out for some time, but no one had accomplished the difficult task of ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 15, 2009, 2:44 pm
I've had two people write in to correct my Phoebe ring post from yesterday. In that post I saidYou can measure the extent of the rings in kilometers, but astronomers and Cassini mission people bo...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 15, 2009, 11:23 am
For a very long time Cassini has been in an orbit that carried it high above and below the plane of the rings. This has been fantastic for observations of the rings and planet during the equinox seas...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 14, 2009, 1:58 pm
I was debating whether to write anything about a reported fireball that streaked across the sky in the Netherlands at roughly 19:00 local time (17:00 UTC) yesterday, October 13, but seeing this image ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 14, 2009, 12:06 pm
Sorry I'm late to this news, but as usual I'll try to compensate by being thorough! Last week, planetary astronomers Anne Verbiscer, Michael Skrutskie, and Doug Hamilton published a paper in ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 13, 2009, 1:50 pm
Advance warning: this entry may be a little technical for some. I hope that the following makes some sense! When I posted my writeup of the Chandrayaan-1 Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) results detailing...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 13, 2009, 9:56 am
I have just posted four more blog entries from Juan Diego Rodgriguez-Blanco detailing the work conducted during this year's Artic Mars Analogue Svalbard Expedition (AMASE), mostly concerning the t...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 12, 2009, 6:43 pm
This is SO cool. Unmannedspaceflight.com member Astro0 was fiddling around with an interesting-looking sequence of Cassini images when he discovered their purpose -- they were gathered in order to se...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 10, 2009, 12:47 pm
The Palomar Observatory adaptive optics image of the crater Cabeus remains the best I've seen from ground-based telescopes of the LCROSS impact site. They've now released a time-lapse video o...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 9, 2009, 1:08 pm
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Diviner team just released some preliminary views of their data taken during the LCROSS impact, which clearly shows the thermal signature from the crash into the Moon....
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 9, 2009, 11:59 am
EDIT OCT 10 2:48 PM: I just realized that the images of the impact flash from the mid-infrared camera were all released mirror-reversed, so I have corrected their orientation below. It's not inco...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 9, 2009, 8:17 am
So the big drama on LCROSS is over. There's every indication that the mission was successful: the Centaur spacecraft crashed where it was directed to, and the LCROSS shepherd spacecraft captured ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 9, 2009, 6:57 am
This plot just shows the aggregate radiance in ultraviolet and visible wavelengths -- all wavelengths -- seen by one of LCROSS' spectrometers after the Centaur hit the Moon. Not much can be read ...
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