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Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.


  • Sep. 28, 2009 | 06:52 PDT | 13:52 UTC
    Fifty-five hours from Mercury
    Actually, at the time that I write this, MESSENGER is only about 32 hours and 400,000 kilometers from closest approach, but this photo was taken at 55 hours and 672,000 kilometers out:Click to enlarge >55 hours from Mercury Flyby 3MESSENGER snapped... More»
  • Sep. 26, 2009 | 14:07 PDT | 21:07 UTC
    My Tweets this week
    If you'd like to see these in real time, Follow me at Twitter. A word on some conventions: "RT" means "Retweet" -- I'm repeating something that somebody else said. Anything preceded by an "@" symbol is the username of someone else on Twitter.... More»
  • Sep. 25, 2009 | 14:02 PDT | 21:02 UTC
    The "Water on the Moon" Hoopla, Part 2: The murkier part of the story
    In Part 1 of my writeup of yesterday's "Water on the Moon" press briefing I explained how scientists using the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3 or "M-cubed") on India's first lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-1, found the first evidence for widespread water on... More»
  • Sep. 25, 2009 | 11:32 PDT | 18:32 UTC
    The "Water on the Moon" Hoopla, Part 1: There's water on the Moon!
    For a couple of weeks now, I've been hearing rumors about an upcoming announcement concerning Chandrayaan-1 Moon Mineralogy Mapper ("M3") discovery of "lots of" water on the Moon. On Tuesday, September 22, NASA announced that there would be a press... More»
  • Sep. 25, 2009 | 09:30 PDT | 16:30 UTC
    Here comes Mercury
    I always marvel at the fact that cruising spacecraft are so far from anything in the solar system that nothing they can look at appears larger than a single pixel to their cameras. Then, after months and months of nothingness, suddenly one of those... More»
  • Sep. 24, 2009 | 11:31 PDT | 18:31 UTC
    Planetary Society Statement on Water on the Moon
    NEWS RELEASE The Planetary Society 65 N. Catalina Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91106-2301 (626) 793-5100 Fax (626) 793-5528 E-mail: tps@planetary.org Web: http://planetary.org For Immediate Release: September 24, 2009 Contact: Susan... More»
  • Sep. 24, 2009 | 10:17 PDT | 17:17 UTC
    The Moon as seen by Cassini VIMS, processed by an amateur
    One of the pieces of the Big Super Secret Moon Water Story that's all over the Web and will be the topic of a press briefing in under an hour is an observation of the Moon made by Cassini more than a decade ago during its flyby of Earth. As some of... More»
  • Sep. 24, 2009 | 09:40 PDT | 16:40 UTC
    An ALMA antenna journeys to its pad
    This is a significant week for radio astronomy, but I'll admit that I am posting the photos and video below for no other reason than that they are gorgeous. I'll give this to all of you traditional astronomers (i.e. people who look at space from... More»
  • Sep. 23, 2009 | 17:14 PDT | Sep. 24 00:14 UTC
    Beautiful 3D animation of Spirit's environs in Gusev Crater
    Doug Ellison has done it again: he's created a spectacular overflight of Gusev crater based upon digital elevation models of the terrain produced by the United States Geological Survey from HiRISE data. This time he gave the atmosphere a... More»
  • Sep. 23, 2009 | 14:30 PDT | 21:30 UTC
    Looking forward to MESSENGER's third flyby of Mercury
    I've just posted a news story containing more detail than most of you probably want on the science plans for the upcoming MESSENGER Mercury flyby, which will happen at 21:55 UTC on September 29. Go read! They're getting tricky with their science... More»