en-us http://planetary.org/blog/ A guide to interesting stuff going on in space science, space exploration, and space advocacy. 15 Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:35:26 GMT Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:35:26 GMT http://www.planetary.org/_img/rss/logo.jpg 127 111 http://planetary.org/blog/ blog@planetary.org (Emily Ladakawalla) Copyright © 2008 by The Planetary Society. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001758/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001758/ After Phoenix fell silent on November 2, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that they'd carry on listening for faint transmissions from the spacecraft, using the two NASA orbiters, until the period of Mars conjunction began. Well, conjunction has begun, and JPL announced this morning that "The last attempt to listen for a signal from Phoenix was when [Mars] Odyssey passed overhead at 3:49 p.m. PST Saturday, Nov. 29 (4:26 p.m. local Mars .... Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:05:10 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001757/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001757/ Shortly after Chandrayaan-1 launched I received an email from a skeptical Indian saying "how can we really be sure that the spacecraft is as successful as the government is telling us it is?" I don't believe that the question was from the point of view of the nutty conspiracy theorists that tend to haunt public discussion of space exploration (e.g. the "we didn't land on the Moon" people) -- it seemed more like the healthy sort of doubt any .... Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:56:26 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001756/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001756/ Varuna is one of the few formally named Kuiper belt objects because it's relatively large -- in fact, for a time, it was the second largest known object in the Kuiper belt, after Pluto. It's always difficult to know exactly how big such a distant object is, though. You can estimate the size by making an assumption about the albedo, which is a measurement of how much of the Sun's light the body reflects. But albedos of objects in the solar .... Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:36:44 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001755/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001755/ Here's our monthly checkup with the Dawn mission, contributed by Marc Rayman, the mission's Project System Engineer. Thanks Marc! --ESL by Dr. Marc D. Rayman Dear Indawnviduals, The Dawn spacecraft is healthy and on course for its flyby of Mars early next year. The planet's gravity will help boost the probe on its way to rendezvous with Vesta. While the spacecraft has its sights set on the asteroid belt (via Mars), its path is now bringing it .... Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:12:17 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001754/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001754/ In my most recent post on Chandrayaan-1 I mentioned the first results from the RADOM experiment, provided to the Indian mission by the nation of Bulgaria. I also mentioned that "I don't know anything about Bulgaria's previous contributions to planetary exploration," and two of you readers took the hint to send me further information about exactly that topic. Thanks to their help, I can now tell you that Bulgaria -- a country with a population .... Sat, 29 Nov 2008 22:02:31 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001753/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001753/ This week's carnival of space is live over at Tiny Mantras. Check it out! And, while I'm linking to stuff, I'll mention that there is a new "From the Executive Director" commentary from Lou Friedman on the Roadmap for Human Space Exploration. .... Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:38:32 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001752/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001752/ The Indian Space Research Organisation just posted a few images containing the first publicly released data from two of the spacecraft's 11 instruments. We've previously seen images from its Terrain Mapping Camera and from the imager aboard its Moon Impact Probe. The new images are from the HySI hyperspectral imager -- one of the five Indian-built instruments -- and the RADOM or Radiation Dose Monitor Experiment, which was provided to the .... Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:27:55 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001751/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001751/ Every once in a while I get an email from a reader about something bright in the sky right now. They usually guess it's a planet but aren't sure how to figure out which one. There are lots of sites on the Internet that you can use to figure out what's going on in the night sky -- you can just search around and find your favorite -- but I'll tell you my favorite, and that's John Walker's Your Sky at fourmilab.ch. I'm a big fan of interactive .... Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:58:36 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001750/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001750/ This week (last week, actually), the Carnival of Space can be found over at Starts with a Bang. And I realize that I never linked to the previous week's Carnival over at One Astronomer's Noise. And, while I'm linking to stuff, this week's Planetary Radio features an interview with a former professor of mine, Carlé Pieters from Brown University, who's the principal investigator of the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (also known as M3 or "M .... Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:57:19 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001749/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001749/ I haven't mentioned the International Year of Astronomy yet because I spent months procrastinating from putting together pages on it for our website, but I have finally defeated my procrastinatory urges and posted a whole new section to our website on the project. In a nutshell, 2009 will be the International Year of Astronomy (it is so decreed by the International Astronomical Union and the United Nations), and there are worldwide events and .... Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:43:51 GMT