Articles

The Downlink

Celebrate the December solstice, be thankful you’re not on Triton, and say goodbye to the InSight Mars lander.

The Downlink

Distant robots run into problems, and distant worlds hold onto secrets — for now.

The Downlink

There’s no limit to what a community of like-minded space enthusiasts, advocates and even famous luminaries can achieve when we all work together.

The Downlink

Venus is an intimidating destination for spacecraft, and we’re pretty sure Earth hasn’t yet been a destination for aliens.

The Downlink

Jupiter is a world of extremes, and Venus hints at some mysteries. You can take action to help learn more about these worlds and others.

The Downlink

Perseverance’s tracks show where it’s been. You can help decide where we’re going.

Emily Lakdawalla

Two maps by The Planetary Society show all the places we've landed or crashed on Mars as of June 2020.

Emily Lakdawalla

InSight has detected a couple more small Marsquakes, and the team has lifted the housing of the heat probe off the ground, exposing the top of the mole in a surprisingly wide hole.

Emily Lakdawalla

InSight has finally detected its first Marsquakes, but so far, none have been large enough to produce good science. Still, it’s great news that the seismometer is producing sensible data.

Emily Lakdawalla

The HP3 mole started hammering itself today, and almost immediately (after just 5 minutes) appears to have encountered a rock. No matter; they'll try again Saturday.

Emily Lakdawalla

InSight has placed its second science instrument on the ground and set it free. Now it's time to bury the heat probe in the soil.

Emily Lakdawalla

InSight has gone two for two, placing the second of its instruments gently on the Martian ground.

Jason Davis

NASA says it does not expect to receive any more transmissions from the MarCO CubeSats that accompanied Insight to Mars last year.

Emily Lakdawalla

InSight mission has successfully placed the wind and thermal shield over the seismometer. The seismometer will now be shielded from winds and kept warm over the cold Martian nights, so the quality of its data should dramatically increase.

Emily Lakdawalla

Engineers have leveled the seismometer and made progress on adjusting the position of the tether so that it doesn't interfere for the experiment. Most significantly for the mission, they have balanced the Very Broad Band sensors -- 3 of SEIS’ 6 seismic sensors -- and confirmed that they are generating good data.

Emily Lakdawalla

It’s been a busy first three weeks on the InSight mission, and they’ve already achieved a major milestone: placing the seismometer on the ground. They've also gathered a self-portrait and 360-degree panorama.

Emily Lakdawalla

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has finally spotted the InSight lander, its parachute, and its heat shield resting on the Martian surface. The images confirm the location of InSight's landing site, a little to the north and west of the center of the landing ellipse. The lander is located at 4.499897° N, 135.616000° E.

Casey Dreier

In the brief period of public and political goodwill generated by NASA's latest success at the Red Planet, now is the time to secure a commitment for the next steps at Mars: sample return.

Emily Lakdawalla

There was jubilation when InSight landed, but I'm just as happy to be writing about a distinct InSight event: The flow of raw images sent from Mars, straight to the Web, has begun.

Emily Lakdawalla

InSight touched down on Mars today, bringing NASA's total of successful Mars landers to 8 and total number of active NASA Mars missions to 6.