Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 9, 2012, 7:17 pm
... Tuesday, Bill Nye was privileged to attend the second White House Science Fair. Click to enlarge >President Obama shakes Bill Nye's hand at the 2012 White House Science FairPresident Barack Obama shakes hands with Bill Nye, The Science Guy, during an event in the East ... in Washington, Tues...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 9, 2012, 2:26 pm
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. "Commemorate?" you may ask. "It's not even close to Pluto yet." You'd be right to say so, but the proposal must hap...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 8, 2012, 6:47 pm
Planetary scientist Susan Niebur passed away on February 6, 2012, of inflammatory breast cancer. While I did not know Susan very well personally, I knew her professionally as a staunch supporter of and passionate organizer for young people, women, and families in planetary science. She organized c...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 8, 2012, 1:42 pm
You are invited to another live lecture by our friends with the big telescopes high atop Mauna Kea. CalTech Professor of Physics Tom Soifer directs the Spitzer Science Center. He'll be at the Kahilu Theater on the Big Island of Hawaii to take us on a journey "filled with beauty, drama, mystery and ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 7, 2012, 7:46 pm
There's been a bit of buzz on the Web this week regarding an ESA press release titled "ESA's Mars Express radar gives strong evidence for former Mars ocean." I don't ordinarily write about press-released science papers, but am making an exception for this one because no one has really explained the...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 7, 2012, 1:14 pm
At the center of the Milky Way, a monster awaits. Known as Sagittarius A, this turbulent region of space is believed to contain a black hole four million times more massive than our own sun. Within the black hole -- known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star") -- space and time lose their conventio...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 6, 2012, 11:46 pm
By Mat Kaplan This week's Planetary Radio episode includes a great update on the James Webb Space Telescope from Eric Smith, the Deputy Program Director for the JWST at NASA headquarters. The controversy over the budget for this magnificent new instrument surfaces in the discussion. Some scientist...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 6, 2012, 8:32 pm
Well, this is exciting! Tomorrow, Bill Nye has an invitation to the White House to attend the second White House Science Fair. The first was in 2010, and Bill attended that one too. Here he is with the POTUS, the Mythbusters, Steven Chu, and several very smart and driven kids.Click to enlarge >Bi...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 6, 2012, 7:24 pm
By Louis D. Friedman Back when the U.S. suffered several Mars mission failures, we indulged in some dark humor at JPL, blaming the "great galactic ghoul" for gobbling up our spacecraft. For a while, after the failure of Phobos-Grunt, it appeared that some in Russia were taking the blame-game seriou...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 6, 2012, 4:38 pm
Here's an awesome picture to start off the week. The data came from Cassini's flyby of Enceladus on January 31, 2011; it was part of Cassini's January 2012 data release. Most of the visible globe is lit by yellowish light reflected first from Saturn; only a thin crescent receives sunlight. At bot...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 2, 2012, 6:06 pm
This weekend is SpaceUp unconference in San Diego, and I'll be attending on Saturday. I've never been to an unconference before, so I'm very curious to see how it all works! You can still register if you want to attend, but if you can't, some part of the unconference will be webcast on Spacevidcas...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 2, 2012, 5:33 pm
JPL issued a news note today with that most dreaded of press release titles: "Mission Status Report," which I dread because it's usually a euphemism for "something bad has happened to one of our spacecraft." But this time it contains nothing but good news. It briefly notes that the Jupiter-bound Ju...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 2, 2012, 5:20 pm
Fraser Cain has organized a weekly Space Hangout that happens at 1800 UTC on Thursdays, and kindly invited me to participate. This week's lineup included him and me as well as Pamela Gay, Nicole Gugliucci, Alan Boyle, and Ian O'Neill. In this week's space hangout, we talked about the search for su...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 1, 2012, 5:49 pm
I could watch this video a hundred times. It's basically a cell phone video shot by a spacecraft in orbit around the Moon. It's the first release from MoonKAM, tiny cameras included on both GRAIL spacecraft whose only purpose is public outreach. Classrooms can sign up for opportunities to propose...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Feb 1, 2012, 3:17 pm
For my regular readers: this post does get around to space eventually. Bear with me. A recent tweet by @AlYankovic tipped me to the fact that the children's book author, songwriter, and illustrator Sandra Boynton recently established a presence on Twitter. As I'm a huge fan of her oeuvre, I immedi...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 31, 2012, 10:35 pm
By Mat Kaplan We're just a week away from the first lecture in this class that will introduce you to the wonders of astronomy. The Planetary Society's Director of Projects, Dr. Bruce Betts, is ready to return to the virtual classroom at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Catch Bruce in ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 31, 2012, 7:32 pm
By Louis D. Friedman Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, has released its official report concerning the failure of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which fell back to Earth from orbit on January 15 after failing to ignite the engines that were to take it to the largest Martian moon. News agencies a...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 31, 2012, 3:12 pm
I think the word for the month of February is: "routine." The 21 missions that I'm tracking (amounting to 24 spacecraft) are nearly all in routine science operations or cruise behavior, gathering data from across the solar system or journeying to new destinations. Of course, this is a smaller numb...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 31, 2012, 12:37 pm
Date has been corrected to June 2016 (original article had December 2016). And it's no longer clear that there's been a formal decision to enter orbit on that date rather than in 2015 or later. See the notes below. --ESL Japan's Venus climate orbiter Akatsuki failed to enter orbit in December 2010...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 30, 2012, 3:23 pm
Here's the latest 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 Asdawnished Readers, Dawn is scrutinizing Vesta from its low-altitude mapping orbit (LAMO), circling the rocky wor...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 25, 2012, 7:33 pm
by Charlene Anderson The Cosmos Award for Public Presentation of Science – at least the blown-glass Saturn trophy given to Stephen Hawking by The Planetary Society – continues to appear around the Internet. The BBC has now posted a great image from the Science Museum in London's exhibit of curios...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 25, 2012, 2:10 pm
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 (though I'm not completely happy with how the last one turned out, and am start...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 24, 2012, 5:51 pm
On February 24, 2007, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft passed by Mars, the second of four planetary gravity-assist flybys on its long route to a 2014 rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. At the time, they released two photos from the main science camera, OSIRIS. One was a ver...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 23, 2012, 7:32 pm
Today Opportunity sent back to Earth the last few frames of the "deck pan" self-portrait she took during the waning days of 2011. Her solar panels are very dusty, which isn't helpful. It's near winter solstice in her southern location on Mars, so the angled Sun is not providing as much power as it...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 23, 2012, 2:56 pm
At the end of last week, a rather sensational article appeared in both the Russian- and English-language sites of the Russian news agency, RIA Novosti. "Life Spotted on Venus - Russian Scientist," ran the English headline; a Google translation of the Russian one goes: "The Soviet probes may have pho...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 20, 2012, 8:32 pm
By Charlene Anderson Catching up on my blog reading today, I turned to "Cosmic Log," science writer Alan Boyle's must-read column on msnbc.com. Today's entry is titled "Stephen Hawking's curios explained." To celebrate Hawking's 70th birthday, the Science Museum in London is displaying the keepsake...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 20, 2012, 12:42 pm
It's impossible to avoid a foreboding feeling when reading the early newsletters that came out of the Galileo project. Undoubtedly, Galileo transformed our understanding of Jupiter and especially its moons, revealing Europa and Ganymede to be worlds with liquid oceans worthy of exploration on their...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 19, 2012, 5:12 pm
Fraser Cain has organized a weekly Space Hangout that happens at 1800 UTC on Thursdays, and kindly invited me to participate. This week's lineup included me as well as Nancy Atkinson, Pamela Gay, Nicole Gugliucci, Phil Plait, Alan Boyle, and Jon Voisey. It's a largely astronomical crowd so most of...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 19, 2012, 3:18 pm
We're being watched by an army of Earth-observing satellites. Some zip above the world's cities at high noon, creating global maps bathed in perpetual sunlight. Others hang in eerie suspension over the equator, blinking at regular intervals to send pictures of cloud patterns to meteorologists. A f...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Jan 19, 2012, 12:50 pm
Tune in soon (in 10 minutes, as I post this) to Fraser Cain's Google+ page for the weekly Space Hangout. I'll be participating, as will Fraser Cain, Phil Plait, Pamela Gay, Alan Boyle, and the usual cast! If you can't tune in live, don't fret; I'll post the recorded version later today. ....
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 2, 2011, 3:12 pm
Today I'm reviewing -- and recommending -- two art-laden books. Michael Carroll's Drifting on Alien Winds is nonfiction, while the IAAA's The Beauty of Space is an art book, but both books are about describing our understanding of the alien-yet-familiar worlds across our solar system, and what they...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Nov 1, 2011, 8:58 pm
The Dawn mission to Vesta continues to release an image every day, and recently they have been releasing lots of color images. I like color pictures for aesthetic reasons, but color is actually a very important property of planetary surfaces. Color, and how it varies across a planetary surface, pr...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 31, 2011, 2:14 pm
Last month I posted a preliminary version of a slide I was working on for use in my public presentations, a slide that contains everything in the solar system bigger than 400 kilometers across, and invited comment. I've listened to all of your comments and corrections and come up with a second vers...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 28, 2011, 7:17 am
Well, that was awesome. The NPP Earth observation satellite launched successfully an hour or so ago, and I was with a chilled but thrilled crowd of a few hundred people to watch it at Vandenberg Air Force Base. I spent the previous day with 25 other Tweeters enjoying the rare privilege of a tour a...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 26, 2011, 5:39 pm
This evening I'll be headed up to Lompoc, California, to participate in my first Tweetup along with 25 other Tweeters. The Tweetup will be all day tomorrow and includes briefings by NPP managers, scientists, and engineers, followed by a tour of the Mission Director's Center with George Diller. Dil...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 25, 2011, 5:26 pm
For a few weeks over November and December, a rare launch window to Mars opens, and then slams shut agin. Mars launch windows only happen once each 26 months, so if you miss the window, you have to wait more than two years for the next one. That happened to both of the Mars-bound spacecraft that a...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 25, 2011, 2:30 pm
One of the goals of scientific research is to understand something in the physical world well enough to make accurate predictions about the future. Weather is a classic prediction problem, and a good example of just how hard it is to describe complex systems well enough -- through equations or comp...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 24, 2011, 6:55 pm
I'm nearly two weeks late getting to this news but better late than never, right? There was a press briefing from the Dawn mission at the Geological Society of America (GSA) meeting on October 12. The press briefing is fortunately recorded for posterity at JPL's Ustream channel, and I finally found...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 21, 2011, 6:39 pm
It's been killing me that I haven't been able to attend any of the major deep-space launches this year -- GRAIL, Juno, or the upcoming Curiosity. So I was thrilled when NASA announced the opportunity for Twitter users to register to attend a "Tweetup" at the launch of the Earth-orbiting spacecraft ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 20, 2011, 8:34 pm
It's mid-October in southern Arizona. While the rest of the United States slips quietly into Fall, the sun here still rises far above the distant Rincon Mountains as we head east from Tucson. The dry, 100-degree air implores us to maintain a lazy pace as we drive along, lest we succumb to the unforg...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 20, 2011, 1:35 am
Cassini has completed two very close flybys of Enceladus in less than three weeks, one of them just this morning, and the images from that encounter have already arrived on Earth. For the extra-close, 99 kilometer October 1 flyby, the fields and particles instruments were controlling Cassini's orie...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 19, 2011, 3:10 pm
Programming note: tonight, public television stations will be airing a new, two-hour NOVA documentary, "Finding Life Beyond Earth." If you do not get American public television, I've been told that NOVA will stream the show from their website after it premieres on TV. The preview (below) looks prett...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 19, 2011, 2:49 pm
JAXA's solar sail demonstration craft IKAROS is still puttering along, 17 months after it launched, and its controllers back on Earth keep coming up with new things to try with it. I'm pretty amazed by the most recent trick: reversing its spin direction. This may not sound like a big deal, but it ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 18, 2011, 8:55 pm
I consider October and November to be book review season. We're well out of the mental coasting of summer and have gotten into the groove of school and work in fall, and are in the relative quiet before the insanity of the season that stretches from Thanksgiving to the New Year, when much of the We...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 18, 2011, 7:36 pm
by Mat Kaplan Producer, Planetary Radio Hey, junkie! You just can't get enough science, can you? The National Science Foundation has your fix. It's free, it's 24 x 7, and it's as close as your smartphone, tablet or computer. The Planetary Society has a selfish interest in the NSF's new Science360 ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 18, 2011, 3:01 pm
I know I just posted about Phobos-Grunt on Friday, but there are lots of new pictures from Baikonur Cosmodrome (Russia's main launch facility in Kazakhstan) showing Phobos-Grunt being removed from its shipping crate and tipped upright in preparation for its launch in early November. I've posted a s...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 17, 2011, 8:44 am
Click to enlarge >ROSAT It should give you a feeling of déjà vu: a defunct satellite's orbit is decaying, and because that orbit is circular it's going to be impossible to predict where and when along its ground track it's going to happen. A few large pieces will make it to the ground, and there'...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 14, 2011, 6:39 pm
Фобос-Грунт is getting ready for launch! Russia's Phobos sample return mission and the Chinese Mars orbiter that will ride piggyback on it to Mars will soon be shipped to Baikonur cosmodrome to get ready for a launch that is currently planned for 20:16 UTC on November 7, according to an u...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 14, 2011, 4:21 pm
By Charlene Anderson The European Space Agency (ESA) seems to have gotten tired of waiting for NASA to commit to its share of the joint 2016/2018 Mars missions that were planned to lay the groundwork for an eventual delivery of samples of Mars to Earth. Space News is reporting that, to save the ...
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Emily L. posted an article on The Planetary Society Blog - Oct 14, 2011, 1:04 pm
by Jason Davis The Arctic isn't supposed to be the pole of the Earth with an ozone problem. Yet this year, for the first time, seasonal ozone loss above the Earth's northern pole rivaled that of Antarctica. A NASA-led study published in the journal Nature shows the Arctic suffered an 80% ozone dep...
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