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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Oct. 28, 2011 | 04:17 PDT | 11:17 UTC
NPP Earth observatory launched successfully, and I was there!
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... More»
Oct. 26, 2011 | 14:39 PDT | 21:39 UTC
NPP Tweetup schedule and launch timeline
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... More»
Oct. 25, 2011 | 14:26 PDT | 21:26 UTC
What's up in the solar system in November 2011
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... More»
Oct. 25, 2011 | 11:30 PDT | 18:30 UTC
Mars Climate Sounder confirms a Martian weather prediction
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... More»
Oct. 24, 2011 | 15:55 PDT | 22:55 UTC
Science from Vesta at the Geological Society of America meeting
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... More»
Oct. 21, 2011 | 15:39 PDT | 22:39 UTC
NPP's launching next week, and I'll be there to see it! (Hopefully.)
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... More»
Oct. 20, 2011 | 17:34 PDT | Oct. 21 00:34 UTC
Guest Blog: Jason Davis: The Fish That Sent Us to the Moon
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... More»
Oct. 19, 2011 | 22:35 PDT | Oct. 20 05:35 UTC
Pretty pictures & movies: Eye candy from two recent Cassini Enceladus flybys
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... More»
Oct. 19, 2011 | 12:10 PDT | 19:10 UTC
NOVA: Finding Life Beyond Earth airs tonight, with lots of planetary stars
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... More»
Oct. 19, 2011 | 11:49 PDT | 18:49 UTC
A new trick for IKAROS: spinning the other way
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... More»
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