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Trying something a little different, to keep up with the whole “Web 2.0″ thing… The above is a video from the HD camera aboard Japan’s Kaguya probe, which recently crashed into the Lunar surface. It’s not really new news; I just thought it was cool (and wanted to try out video embedding). If it doesn’t [...]

No, I didn’t shoot that one. NASA’s New Horizons probe has just hurtled past Jupiter to pick up speed on its way out to visit Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Because of the limitations of sending back tons of data from hundreds of millions of miles away, the probe has buffered up all of the [...]

Hans Nyberg has combined high-res scans of photos taken on the Apollo missions with modern digital image processing techniques to create scrollable, zoomable 360º panoramas of the lunar landing sites. Requires a recent version of QuickTime, and I’m sure they’ll take forever to load on slow internet connections, but it’s well worth it in my [...]

As I noted a couple of posts ago, there’s a lot going on in the world of space exploration: NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has successfully entered Mars orbit. Aside from launch, orbit insertion was probably the most risky part of the mission. Congratulations to the MRO team, and I can’t wait to see what new [...]

This spring is going to be a good time to be a space geek. There’s a lot going on in the world(s) of planetary exploration: As I posted earlier, NASA’s New Horizons probe has launched to Pluto and its newly discovered moons. It’ll be a long time before it gets there though. Why do other [...]

This Flash animation from the ESA simulating the Huygens probe’s landing on Titan is pretty darn cool. (Can you believe it’s been over a year ago?) If you click on the animation there’s a link to download an 80-some-odd megabyte MPEG at much higher resolution and quality. A lot of it seems to be filled [...]

After a couple of days’ worth of delays, the New Horizons probe launched late yesterday afternoon and is now healthy and on its way to Pluto. It’s the fastest moving vehicle launched from Earth to date, and will cross the Moon’s orbit in just three days, but will still take almost ten years to reach [...]

If all goes well, New Horizons, our first vehicle to visit Pluto, will launch tomorrow afternoon. If not, they have until the middle of February to launch, or they’ll miss the window to get a gravity assist from Jupiter and the trip will take up to five years longer. So let’s keep our fingers crossed…