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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Apr. 1, 2011 | 13:08 PDT | 20:08 UTC
Lovely giant full Moon photo
Here's a photo worthy of hanging on the wall: a gorgeous, 4000-pixel-square portrait of the full Moon captured by Rolf Hempel from Germany on the night of the "Supermoon." Click to enlarge >Full Moon (enhanced color)The full Moon on March 19, 2011... More»
Mar. 31, 2011 | 13:59 PDT | 20:59 UTC
What's up in the solar system in April 2011
April 2011 will see MESSENGER begin the science phase of its orbital mission at Mercury, and should, I think, also see the start of Dawn's approach observations of Vesta. At Mars, Opportunity is back on the road again, rolling inexorably toward... More»
Mar. 30, 2011 | 14:31 PDT | 21:31 UTC
Images and data now pouring in from MESSENGER at Mercury
Today the MESSENGER mission held a press briefing to show off some of the first images and other data that are streaming in from the spacecraft, now that it has entered Mercury orbit. Before I get to the more substantial stuff I'll just post my... More»
Mar. 29, 2011 | 14:03 PDT | 21:03 UTC
MESSENGER delivers its first image from Mercury
This is MESSENGER's very first photo from Mercury orbit, a wide-angle view that reaches right to Mercury's south pole, exposing a very tiny sliver of territory not previously seen by spacecraft. It was taken at 09:20 UTC today, March 29, 2011, the... More»
Mar. 29, 2011 | 09:49 PDT | 16:49 UTC
LPSC 2011: Lunar Layers
Here's another article based on a Lunar and Planetary Science Conference presentation, by Mike Malaska. By day, Mike is a Ph.D. organic chemist leading drug discovery projects for a pharmaceutical company. By night, he is a space enthusiast... More»
Mar. 28, 2011 | 14:13 PDT | 21:13 UTC
Saturn's storm: A quick turnaround from Hubble
Saturn's raging northern storm has been watched since it began by amateur astronomers, and now Cassini is getting in to the act too. Presumably once astronomers realized the magnitude of what was going on, some of Earth's great observatories were... More»
Mar. 28, 2011 | 13:59 PDT | 20:59 UTC
A radio show on Mercury and a space carnival
Today's Planetary Radio features Sean Solomon on the successful arrival of MESSENGER at Mercury. After checking that out, wander over to the 190th Carnival of Space, hosted this week by Paul Gilster over at Centauri Dreams. And for a bit of fun,... More»
Mar. 25, 2011 | 13:52 PDT | 20:52 UTC
Phobos LIFE gets a ride on Endeavour as Shuttle LIFE!
This is cool in several ways. The Planetary Society is contributing this thing called the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE) to Russia's Phobos sample return mission -- it's basically a sealed puck with dormant microbes inside that'll... More»
Mar. 25, 2011 | 13:46 PDT | 20:46 UTC
Checking in on Jupiter: the belt is coming back
Since it's been several months since I last took a look at Jupiter, I thought it was time to see what's up with the South Equatorial Belt. For those of you who may have forgotten, Jupiter typically has two dark red stripes crossing its belly, the... More»
Mar. 25, 2011 | 13:44 PDT | 20:44 UTC
The end of Stardust
So, it's over. Stardust's last transmission to Earth was yesterday, March 24, 2011 at 23:33 UTC. Its final act was to burn up all of its last remaining fuel, a move intended to help engineers validate their guesses for how much fuel actually... More»
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