A guide to interesting stuff going on in space science, space exploration, and space advocacy.

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I've just posted a news story on the latest results of the MESSENGER mission, announced in a telephone news conference held today. The timing may seem strange, as it's the day before a major holiday in the U.S., exactly the right time to hold a press conference if your goal is for people to ignore or overlook the news. However, the mission had no choice; the timing was dictated by the editors of Science magazine, who selected Independence Day ....

Go to Mang's Bat Page to check out the 61st Carnival of Space, a weekly tour around space-themed weblogs. And, while I'm linking, don't miss Amir Alexander's update on the status of funding for the Arecibo telescope; A. J. S. Rayl's monthly update on Spirit and Opportunity; and this week's Planetary Radio interview with space scientist and artist William Hartmann. Finally, I should mention that I am leaving tomorrow for a two-week trip to ....

Phil Plait reports that the Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope, or GLAST, is now returning data to Earth! Phil's been kind enough to send traffic my way for my Phoenix coverage; I'm only too happy to send you guys his way for GLAST, since he used to work on the mission -- he knows what he's talking about, and promises to explain the likely strange-looking pictures that will come out later. Chalk up one more active space telescope. And ....

The Phoenix team is lying somewhat low this week. With Phoenix' sols aligned almost perfectly with Arizona days, the team has to work through the local night, and at least two members of the JPL newsroom team have taken the week off. And an exhausted operations team is being given a much deserved two-day break centered on the Independence Day holiday. I managed to connect briefly with Sara Hammond, the press information officer at the ....

For those of you who tuned in today, I'm sorry I forgot to put in a direct link to the webcast! If you missed my webcast on "Be an Armchair Planetary Scientist," you can now watch the recorded version here, and get the chat log and PowerPoint presentation through my video archives page (which is also available from the link on the left nav bar ....

Time to take my weekly census of the spacecraft exploring the solar system. I wrote the Cassini part of this update yesterday but didn't have time to finish, and I've been trying to be a good girl about not working after hours -- so I'm a day later than usual, which is unfortunate because my first item was: Happy birthday to Cassini! On this day [which is to say, yesterday], four years ago, Cassini went into orbit at Saturn. The four-year ....

Please join me Wednesday at noon my time for my next Ustream broadcast. I'm going to do something different this time: I'll start out my broadcast by giving the presentation I gave to the workshop at the Astronomy Society of the Pacific meeting on "How to Be an Armchair Planetary Scientist." This is about how you -- yes, you! -- can participate in the ongoing drama of Earth's exploration of the solar system by playing with the images returned ....

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 Dawnlettantes, Now using an ion thruster that had been powered off since October, Dawn continues to make steady progress on its journey deeper into space. In this phase of the mission, each day of thrusting changes the probe's speed by 6.7 meters/second (15 miles/hour). Dawn will ....

I've received two questions very frequently from readers: "Have they taken another look at Holy Cow yet to see if it's changed?" and "What were those splotches on the leg of the lander in the first image of Holy Cow?" Well, I can now tell you that the answer to the first question is "yes" -- they re-imaged Holy Cow yesterday, sol 31. And there's no official statement from the team yet, but I've looked at the photos and if there is any change, ....

This week's carnival of space can be found at Slacker Astronomy. And, while I'm posting links, here's some new stuff on our website... Amateur astronomers: we've just announced the next round of Gene Shoemaker Near Earth Object Grants, so prepare your application! The deadline is September 30, and the call for proposals is the same as it was in 2006: we're offering small grants to people who want to automate their domes or improve their ....

Or: "pHoenix!" (Sorry. MECA team leader Michael Hecht is responsible for that joke.) There was a teleconference on the status of the Phoenix mission up to sol 30 today. (Like all of these media teleconferences, if you'd like to listen to it after the fact you can do so at JPL's Phoenix Media website.) Here's the news in a nutshell:The wet chemistry lab analyzed its first sample, and reported the pH of the surface soil to be alkaline, at ....

The Cassini camera team has delivered early on the scheduled July 1 release of data to the Planetary Data System, the archive from which all researchers (and members of the public) can locate and retrieve data from nearly every NASA (and some non-NASA) missions. The camera team -- and all the other teams -- are required to deliver data on a quarterly basis, with everything delivered within nine to twelve months of its acquisition. So the ....

Thanks to the 90-plus people who tuned in to see today's Ustream webcast! And also to Richard Hendricks for serving as question wrangler and spammer basher. I'm finally following through on something I've been intending to do for a while, which is to create a dedicated page on this site archiving past Ustream webcasts and other video fare. It's also available through a left nav link over there. I didn't have time today to go back and do the ....

Join me live for a video chat today, at 12:00 my time / 19:00 UT at my Ustream homepage. I'll probably focus on the current status of Phoenix for half an hour, then open it up to any topic that you find to be of interest after that. And hopefully I'll remember to record it this time! (Wouldn't hurt for someone to remind me at the beginning of the chat, just to make sure I haven't forgotten to hit that button.) I hope to see you all ....

I mentioned at the end of my earlier blog entry that on sol 28 Phoenix downlinked the last of the images necessary to make the first complete 360-degree color view around the lander. That's true, sort of. Here's the first attempt I've seen to assemble those images in color. It's quite a cool view.Click to enlarge Phoenix' "Peter Pan" -- first two rows completeThe "click to enlarge" view takes you to a panorama reduced to 25% of the original ....

I just got off the phone with Phoenix mission manager Barry Goldstein, who filled me in on what's been happening with Phoenix over the last few sols. In a nutshell:The sol 22 anomaly is now understood; it was a two-part bug, the first part of which was fixed with a software update uplinked yesterday, so they may allow the scientists to start using flash again today (in their plans for sol 30).They now think they understand the problem with the ....

Lou Friedman has just posted an update on the next solar sail mission. We launched Cosmos 1 to test the principle of steering a spacecraft using light pressure back in 2005 but our launch vehicle failed. We're planning on building a similar spacecraft and trying again using a more reliable launch vehicle; Lou says in his update that we're currently looking at a piggyback on a Soyuz-Fregat. The main thing we need right now is funding, and ....

Let's check in on what's going on with our trusty robots around the solar system. Cassini continues its stable once-per-week orbits of Saturn; it just this morning passed periapsis (its closest approach) of Rev 73, crossing to the sunlit side of the rings. With the once-per-week orbits periapsis happens on Mondays and apoapsis on Thursdays. The next scheduled close flyby of a moon doesn't happen until July 31, but a distant Titan flyby will ....

Join me live for a video chat this Wednesday, June 25, at 12:00 my time / 19:00 UT at my Ustream homepage. I'll probably focus on the current status of Phoenix for half an hour, then open it up to any topic that you find to be of interest after that. And hopefully I'll remember to record it this time! (Wouldn't hurt for someone to remind me at the beginning of the chat, just to make sure I haven't forgotten to hit that button.) I hope to see ....

The Phoenix mission confirmed it this morning: the disappearing act pulled by those chunks of bright material in the Dodo trench pretty much nails the identification of the bright material as ice, which is great news for the mission. Ice is what Phoenix went all the way to Mars to study; it's what the team has been aiming for all these years. They expected to find it, but all this time, doubters and worriers (myself among them) have been ....

Go to scienceblogs.com to check out this week's Carnival of Space. Hey! I got firsties this week! And while you're wandering around the Web, you can take in a few new offerings from our website:Mat Kaplan interviews Ralph Lorenz on his latest book about Titan on this week's Planetary RadioFrom Amir Alexander: Pluto is now a PlutoidAlso And: Trio of Super-Earths DiscoveredAnd Planetary Society Vice President Bill Nye goes to Capitol Hill to ....

As promised yesterday, Phoenix' sol 24 seems to have been a very busy one for imaging. I've been checking the raw images site regularly throughout the day (using the handy-dandy download tool Mike Howard built into his Midnight Mars Browser software) and about 100 images have rolled in so far from the mast-mounted camera alone. There's only been one from the robotic arm camera so I haven't bothered to update my pages yet. Mark Lemmon has ....

A while back I wrote about the way that women's names have been assigned to maps throughout the solar system. Because features on Venus may only be named for women, factual and fictional, there are precious few women's names to be found on features elsewhere in the solar system. That entry begged yet another question: just how many features are named for women? I don't yet have the answer for the entire solar system but I now have in hand the ....

Today I received a press release from the University of Arizona about Phoenix' sol 22 activities. It talked about the new trench called "Snow White" in the Wonderland area (which I wrote about yesterday), and mentioned that TEGA was continuing work. A normal TEGA cycle includes three separate heating cycles on one sample, and since it had already done the first two on sols 18 and 20 to 35°C and 175°C (95 and 350°F), respectively, I ....

I did a short interview about Phoenix for a new Web outlet called "TalkingHeadTV" yesterday, and there are three clips up on YouTube here, here, and here. Check them out! I'll probably get back to weekly Ustream webcasts next week -- stay tuned for details on date and time. ....