The Earth has it, Io has it, and now a third world can be added to list. I’m talking about active volcanism. The Cassini spacecraft finds active icy volcanism reshaping the surface of Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus and spewing water vapor and ice particles into Saturn’s E-ring. What a day for planetary science! read more…

The tiny moon orbiting Saturn named Enceladus has become the third body in the solar system known to have current volcanic activity driven by internal heating, after Earth and Jupiter’s moon Io. The surprising discovery was made after the Cassini spacecraft performed a close flyby of Enceladus on July 14, 2005 and returned the closest…

The discovery of a tenth planet orbiting our Sun was announced today by Dr. Michael E. Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, USA. The planet is at least the size of Pluto and perhaps twice as large. It has been designated 2003UB313 for now while the name suggested by its discoverers…

Burt Rutan and Sir Richard Branson have agreed to form a new company to build new sub-orbital spacecraft for the emerging personal spaceflight industry. “The Spaceship Company” will provide equipment and launch vehicles using technology licensed from Scaled Composites for space tourism operators, including Virgin Galactic. Burt Rutan is president of Scaled Composites, the company…

The European Space Agency’s SMART-1 spacecraft continues to capture images of the Moon in a mission to test new technologies and return new data about our nearest celestial neighbor. In one of the latest images, Hadley Rille, an enormous lava channel over 3.3 billion years old, stretches toward Mount Hadley in the upper right. Geologists…

NASA grounded the remaining space shuttle fleet today after video of yesterday’s Discovery launch revealed that a large piece of insulation foam had fallen off the fuel tank. The debris did not hit the Discovery orbiter but the video footage was a frightening reminder of a similar incident that led to the Columbia disaster in…

NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery successfully launched this morning from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA. The return to flight comes 2 ½ years after the Space Shuttle disaster claimed the lives of seven astronauts returning to Earth after a successful mission. The liftoff occurred at 10:39 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The return to flight has…

The Cassini spacecraft recently returned a raw image of Saturn dwarfing its tiny moon Mimas. On Monday, July 18, 2005 Cassini was approximately 1,642,603 km (1,020,666 miles) away from Mimas and heading out toward its furthest position away from Saturn during this orbit. Orbit 12 will begin on July 24, 2005 with distant flybys of…

On February 20, 2005, the Cassini spacecraft took a picture of Pandora and Prometheus hard a work shepherding water ice particles and dust into a distinct F-ring unit within Saturn’s larger ring structure. Historically, three main rings were discovered around Saturn, labeled C, B and A from the inside out. Later, fainter rings and structures…

Standing kilometers tall, roaming the desert in crisscrossing paths, vacuuming or depositing dust, and possibly contributing to albedo (surface light reflection) and climate changes, images of dust devils in motion on Mars have been captured by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. Spirit captured images of gusts and whirlwinds full of dust marching across Gusev Crater…

The above image is a view of Enceladus as the Cassini spacecraft drew closer and closer on Thursday, July 14, 2005. By the time Cassini had passed the small moon it had come to within 172 km (107 miles) of the surface, the closest flyby yet in a 4-year mission to tour and collect data…

Enceladus, a tiny moon of Saturn, may be a world of water ice volcanoes actively resurfacing the surrounding terrain, according to planetary scientists. Surprised by tantalizing evidence of activity, scientists believe Enceladus may be the primary source of material for one of Saturn’s rings. Data from Titan has shown that water ice in the outer…

Astronomers using data from the Keck I Observatory on top of Mauna Kea mountain in Hawaii have discovered an exoplanet in a triple star system. The planet, only slightly larger than Jupiter, is very close to the central star in the system, completing one orbit in just 3.3 days. The other two stars orbit each…

When the world’s foremost expert on impact cratering mentions that his preconceived notions about comets have changed at least twice in the past week, it is time to rewrite the book on the subject. Dr. H. Jay Melosh, professor and a member of the Deep Impact science team, spoke before a packed crowd Saturday night,…

The moons of Saturn are a strange assortment of worlds. When the Cassini spacecraft takes the highest resolution images ever of each new world, it generally captures something that leaves scientists and space buffs scratching their heads. Enter the next head-scratcher: Hyperion. This tiny water ice moon looks like a sponge and may in fact…

Deep Impact Flyby took a look back at the devastation it wrought on Comet Tempel 1 and snapped a spectacular image of impact ejecta streaming out into space in a column that has grown much larger in dimension than the comet nucleus itself. While images and other data continues to stream to the Earth from…

Members of the Deep Impact team spoke to reporters early this morning about the success of their mission to Comet Tempel 1. About ten percent of the data has been downloaded from Flyby with the remaining portion to be downloaded over the next 24 hours. The team continues to clean up the raw data to…

In a brilliant explosion, Deep Impact’s impactor spacecraft smashed into Comet Tempel 1 around 10:52 p.m. Pacific Standard Time today. The control room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Californa, USA went crazy with gasps, shouts and applause as the first images showing the impact appeared on their projector screen. The image taken by…

There is not a lot of material in the coma of Comet Tempel 1, according to scientists after studying recent observations made by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The space telescope saw a steady stream of X-rays from the interaction of the comet nucleus with the solar wind. However, the X-ray view could change during Tempel…

Deep Impact successfully deployed its impactor spacecraft early this morning on a one-way trip to destruction by Comet Tempel 1. The flyby spacecraft then burned its engines to take it out of the path of the oncoming comet before turning around and snapped the above image of the impactor spacecraft drifting away as it sparkled…

I cannot express just how excited I am by tonight’s Deep Impact with Comet Tempel 1. Because all that energy has to go somewhere (my energy, not the impact energy), I decided to keep up on the latest images and scientific data all night while providing coverage on my own website, Frontier Channel. The articles…

Deep Impact has taken an early look at some of the chemicals in the coma of Comet Tempel 1, detecting water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons via spectral analysis. The coma is an envelope of gas and dust that becomes more active as a comet approaches the Sun. Outbursts of material occur as the…

The space probe Deep Impact will attempt to make history this weekend by blasting a crater into Comet Tempel 1. Scientists expect the crater – perhaps as large as a football field – will provide them a glimpse of fresh material uncovered by the impact. While comets are plentiful in our solar system, scientists know…