Plate tectonics early in its history have been suggested as an explanation of Mars' unsymmetrical shape. Multiple impacts [pdf] have been proposed. Or possibly, it's the result of a single, highly energetic impact....
posted on Jun 26, 2008 - View this thread

Mercury Messenger, a NASA probe, just performed a fly-by of Mercury at a height of 200 kilometers. It's the first spacecraft to visit Mercury since 1975.
posted on Jan 14, 2008 - View this thread

NASA proposes using a Stirling cooler (essentially a Stirling engine in reverse) to keep a probe cool on the surface of Venus, which has had a tendency to melt or smash previous probes. The cooler would maintain a 25cm sphere within the probe at 200°C -- 100°C above the boiling point of water but sufficiently cool for a high-temperature microcontroller to operate. The waste heat radiators on the exterior of the sphere would reach the temperature of 500°C, 40°C above the the normal Venusian surface temperature.
posted on Nov 12, 2007 - View this thread

Did the roof of the Pantheon influence Copernicus? Are the planets of the solar system aligned in accordance with a nearly-forgotten hypothesis known (unfairly) as Bode's Law? A fascinating wide-ranging discussion on BLDGBLOG with Walter Murch, the visionary editor and sound designer for such films as The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, THX1138, and many others. [Murch's film work has previously been discussed here and here.]
posted on Apr 7, 2007 - View this thread

At forty miles (64.4 km) from Pluto to Sun, the Maine Solar System Model is the largest complete three-dimensional scale model of the solar system in the world. What, you didn't know there was more than one? And yes, Pluto is staying put.
posted on Sep 4, 2006 - View this thread

My very elegant mother just sat upon ninjas ... the textbooks, mnemonic devices and more will have to be changed today. Pluto has been demoted from its status as planet to a dwarf planet. We now have 8 in our solar system. The debate is not at all new, and its apparent resolution may not matter to our everyday lives, but it's just a little weird to think of all of the things that will have to be retroactively edited or amended as a result.
posted on Aug 24, 2006 - View this thread

The New Horizons spacecraft will be the first man-made object to visit our controversial sibling planet. An Atlas V will be used to launch the craft to the fastest speed that man has ever hurled an object to the heavens. Due to this and the small size of Pluto, the probe will only be capable of one flyby. Today is the first day in the launch window that the rocket is hoped to be launched.
posted on Jan 17, 2006 - View this thread

Explore our local chunk of space. Here is a scale view of the Solar System, and here one can take a quick trip around it. Use the guidebook to plan your trip (but beware the pop-up ads). Don't forget to bring a camera and snap some photos.
posted on Nov 12, 2005 - View this thread

Cassini Flies by Tethys and Hyperion, and the photos so far have been awesome and weird. I especially want to point out this fascinating view, which, if you look at it closely, reveals what appears to be a string of small impact craters, in a straight line over older terrain. What kind of meteor impact could have produced such an excellent formation of craters? Hyperion photos are coming. (Kokogiak's got backup in case the JRUNS strike.)
posted on Sep 26, 2005 - View this thread

Saturn's Eerie Radio Emissions and other space sounds.
posted on Jul 25, 2005 - View this thread

Six million pixels from Gracela... er, Pluto. A scale model of our solar system. It turns out, we're really, really small.
posted on Feb 12, 2005 - View this thread

Cartography is a skill pretty much taken for granted now, but it wasn't always so. Accurate maps were once prized state secrets, laborious efforts that cost a fortune and took years (or even decades) to complete.

How things have changed. (Yours now, $110) It took almost 500 years to map North America, but it's only taken one tenth of that to map just everything else. In the last 50 years, we've been able to create acurate atlases of two planets and one moon (with a second in the works). Actually, we've done a lot more than that. We're actually running out of things to map.

Maybe Not.
posted on Jan 27, 2005 - View this thread

Saturn's enigmatic moon Titan holds on to its mysteries. Radar images reveal quite a bit of variation but no clear interpretation. The hazy atmosphere prevents the sudden shock of discovery that characterized the Voyager and Galileo flybys of the moons of Jupiter, revealing little more than fuzzy Rorschach blobs. With less than 1% of the surface mapped, researchers suspect that Titan has a young surface shaped by processes that have yet to be revealed.
posted on Nov 5, 2004 - View this thread

An unusual solar object is the subject of a NASA news conference on Monday. The mothership? Or a 10th planet? Thanks to MemeFirst. (Related reading: Is Pluto really a planet?)
posted on Mar 14, 2004 - View this thread

solar system [note: requires anark plugin]
posted on Nov 15, 2003 - View this thread

Large rock named Huya! 3 years after being discovered a large object (?) orbiting the sun has been named.
posted on Aug 24, 2003 - View this thread

From the Sun to Pluto. And beyond lurks the Lobster Nebula...

Aroostook County in Northern Maine has created North America's largest scale model of the Solar System, to be officially unveiled tomorrow (Saturday - June 14, 2003). The model runs along 40 miles of highway with a scale of 1 mile to 1 AU. The project took four years to complete and did not have a budget.
posted on Jun 13, 2003 - View this thread

3-D Maps of Nearby Space "The first detailed map of space within about 1,000 light years of Earth places the solar system in the middle of a large hole that pierces the plane of the galaxy...The new map, produced by University of California, Berkeley, and French astronomers, alters the reigning view of the solar neighborhood." (one view|another view|links to bigger images)
posted on May 30, 2003 - View this thread

Pioneer 10 space probe finally packs it in for good. So long, little fella...
posted on Feb 25, 2003 - View this thread

Celestia is the most beautiful toy. It's a free (open source) simulator of the universe, including breathtaking models of known planets. Watch Jupiter rise over Io or follow the course of a solar eclipse. [more inside]
posted on Feb 4, 2003 - View this thread

The Photon Belt ....along with Maitreya & the greatest sign....and Stargods & 36ft tall humans....all make for some far-out Friday frolicking.
posted on Oct 11, 2002 - View this thread

NASA finds gravitational 'space freeway' that runs through solar system ... Vorgon jokes aside, this could seriously reduce the amount of energy it takes to move around the solar system. [this is good]
posted on Jul 19, 2002 - View this thread

Solar System Akin to Earth's Is Discovered Any minute now, I imagine somebody at a listening station on a smaller, bluer planet a few in from this one making a minute adjustment to their equipment and promptly spraying warm stimulant-laced beverage over their console...
posted on Jun 14, 2002 - View this thread

I saw all five of the visible planets in our solar system tonight! And so can you, if you have clear skies and go outside between 8:45 and 9 p.m. your time this week. Disclaimer - my naked eyes weren't good enough to see Mercury but I could see it with binoculars.
posted on May 6, 2002 - View this thread

The Solar System Simulator 'is designed to simulate - as realistically as possible - what one would actually see from any point in the Solar System. The software looks up the positions of the Sun, planets and satellites from ephemeris files developed here at JPL, as well as star positions and colors from a variety of stellar databasees, and uses special-purpose renderers to draw a color scene. Texture maps for each of the planets and physical models for planetary rings have been derived (in most cases) from scientific data collected by various JPL spacecraft.' Far too complicated for me to even begin to understand, still I've always wondered what Saturn looks like from Triton.
posted on Mar 27, 2002 - View this thread

Reflections on a Mote of Dust "We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam." Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"
posted on Sep 11, 2001 - View this thread

New planets! Saturn-sized, even!
posted on Mar 29, 2000 - View this thread