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The Planetary Society Blog
Archive
Archived posts are listed in reverse chronological order.
Mar. 1, 2009 | 12:26 PST | 20:26 UTC
The Chang'e 1 mission is over
According to this item from the Xinhua news agency, the first Chinese lunar orbiter, Chang'e 1, was intentionally de-orbited and crashed into the Moon today, at 08:13 UTC March 1, 2009. They gave its impact location as 1.5 degrees south, 52.36... More»
Feb. 26, 2009 | 14:23 PST | 22:23 UTC
Mapping Mars, now and in history
Planetary cartographer Phil Stooke has been working on a cool project to compose and compare maps of Mars that show how we saw the planet throughout the Space Age. He's been posting a lot of this work on unmannedspaceflight.com but I wanted to... More»
Feb. 25, 2009 | 09:31 PST | 17:31 UTC
Summary of Cassini's flybys of Saturn's moons
I'm sick today and not up to writing much; fortunately the following graphic arrived just in time in my mailbox this morning. It neatly summarizes all the completed, planned, and proposed close flybys of Saturn's moons by Cassini throughout its... More»
Feb. 24, 2009 | 12:58 PST | 20:58 UTC
John Spencer: Cassini's proposed extended-extended mission tour
I asked John Spencer to write something on the proposed plans for Cassini's second mission extension. The mission has just selected an orbital tour for the extension -- the plan for where Cassini will travel, when -- and is now seeking approval... More»
Feb. 24, 2009 | 12:39 PST | 20:39 UTC
Quick Dawn update: Gravity assist indeed went well
There's been no press release on how Dawn's recent flyby of Mars went, so finally I inquired at JPL for an update. Marc Rayman provided the following: "The gravity assist went perfectly. We will have the final navigation reconstruction near the end... More»
Feb. 24, 2009 | 10:44 PST | 18:44 UTC
UStream Live from JPL's clean room RIGHT NOW
JPL is broadcasting live (only for another half hour or so I think) from the "High Bay" where the Mars Science Laboratory is being assembled; Veronica McGregor (erstwhile the Twitter voice of Phoenix) is online answering questions. Apparently... More»
Feb. 23, 2009 | 16:32 PST | Feb. 24 00:32 UTC
Got binoculars? Spot a comet near Saturn tonight
The greenish comet Lulin, more formally known as C/2007 N3, has been approaching Earth for some time and will, tomorrow, be at its brightest, as it'll reach its closest approach to us. But it might be easiest to spot tonight, as it will be passing... More»
Feb. 23, 2009 | 16:31 PST | Feb. 24 00:31 UTC
Carnival of Space #91
Wander on over to the Next Big Future to check out the 91st Carnival of Space!
And, while I'm linking to stuff, you might also want to listen to this week's Planetary Radio, which features an interview with Michael Mumma on the recent discovery of... More»
Feb. 21, 2009 | 09:10 PST | 17:10 UTC
Looks like the Dawn flyby of Mars went well
Thanks to "OWW" on unmannedspaceflight.com for pointing out this image release on the NASA website: a photo of Mars taken by Dawn, they say, near its closest approach to Mars during its February 17 flyby. According to the caption the illumination... More»
Feb. 19, 2009 | 16:07 PST | Feb. 20 00:07 UTC
What do we know about Uranus' moons? Part 2
A few weeks ago I posted the result of my noodling around for a while with the Voyager 2 image catalogs from Uranus. As amazing and inspiring a mission as Voyager 2 was, its data sets from Uranus and Neptune are quite limited in size; it's possible... More»
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