Last year in July, the Cassini spacecraft was briefly positioned so that it was in the orbit of Saturn, allowing it to point its cameras in the direction of the Sun and capture an ethereally beautiful image of Saturn’s backlit rings. Mission controllers knew that the Earth would be in the field of view of Cassini’s imaging systems, and publicised the event by comparing it to Voyager’s famous Pale Blue Dot image. Campaigners spread the word that as many people … Continue reading →

Planetary scientists can tell a lot about a planet by studying the light reflected off its surface, and filtered through its atmosphere.  One of the things that these techniques had taught them about Mars was that the planet contains a lot of methane in its atmosphere.  This was very exciting, since once of the best sources of methane is the exretions of living organisms.  But a few months ago, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), more commonly known as the Curiosity … Continue reading →