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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Nov. 8, 2011 | 07:00 PST | 15:00 UTC
Phobos-Grunt and Yinghuo-1 poised for liftoff
Russia's Phobos-Grunt sample return spacecraft, carrying the Planetary Society's Phobos LIFE experiment, plus China's Yinghuo-1 Mars minisatellite, are poised for launch at Baikonur! The launch window opens in less than six hours, at 20:16 UTC. ... More»
Nov. 4, 2011 | 13:24 PDT | 20:24 UTC
Phobos-Grunt and Yinghuo-1 now encapsulated in their fairing (lots of photos)
About a week after Curiosity passed through the same milestone, Phobos-Grunt and Yinghuo-1 -- still slated for a November 8 launch -- were encapsulated in their payload fairing in preparation for being stacked on their rocket. And, of course, our... More»
Nov. 4, 2011 | 10:43 PDT | 17:43 UTC
Curiosity stacked for launch, still waiting for plutonium power source installation
It's still three weeks until Curiosity's launch date, but the spacecraft has already been placed on top of its rocket. The Kennedy Space Center's Curiosity photo album now has lots of pictures of the spacecraft being enclosed inside the payload... More»
Nov. 3, 2011 | 15:27 PDT | 22:27 UTC
Print publications galore!
November has already been a very good month for me in the print publication realm. I've had published not one, but two, feature articles on Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory rover. The one I wrote first is in the December 2011 issue of Sky &... More»
Nov. 3, 2011 | 11:48 PDT | 18:48 UTC
Dawn Journal: HAMO successfully completed, LAMO ahead
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 Dawnderfuls,
Dawn has completed another wonderfully successful... More»
Nov. 2, 2011 | 17:05 PDT | Nov. 3 00:05 UTC
Guest post: Jason Davis: Have two spacecraft ever docked to two separate space stations on the same day?
I set out in search of this answer late Tuesday night. As far as I can tell, the answer is no -- although searching for the absence of a record is more challenging than finding one that exists. Enclyclopedia Astronautica has ten entries related to... More»
Nov. 2, 2011 | 14:59 PDT | 21:59 UTC
Deep Impact goes for the deep sky
I love it when old spacecraft get pushed to perform feats that weren't part of their original missions. Today, the EPOXI mission -- which (then named Deep Impact) originally flew past Tempel 1, then used one out-of-focus camera to study extrasolar... More»
Nov. 2, 2011 | 12:12 PDT | 19:12 UTC
Book Reviews: Otherworldly skies, real and imagined
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... More»
Nov. 1, 2011 | 17:58 PDT | Nov. 2 00:58 UTC
What do Dawn's color ratio images of Vesta mean?
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. ... More»
Oct. 31, 2011 | 11:14 PDT | 18:14 UTC
Scale solar system presentation slide, version 2
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... More»
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