Last week , I told you we would show you a new map of Mercury based on the January MESSENGER flyby. Here it is, kindly provided by one of NASA’s master mappers, Robert Gaskell of the Planetary Science Institute in Altadena, California. This image is an anaglyph — a flat image that simulates a three-dimensional view — of the fault scarp Beagle Rupes as it cuts across the crater Sveinsdóttir. The area shown here is about 160 miles (257 kilometers) square...

In centuries past, explorers would visit terra incognita — unknown lands — and bring new information back home to feed the master mappers of Europe. It hasn’t changed all that much — except the explorers are robot spacecraft and the master mappers of the solar system are scientists. Late Tuesday afternoon, I saw a NASA press release about one of NASA’s master mappers, Robert Gaskell. He’s a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson...

NASA engineers have proposed a mission to an asteroid threatening Earth. Bruce Damer (DigitalSpace) I’m happy to report NASA may be planning to do more about the as-yet unaddressed asteroid threat to Earth than helplessly watch giant space rocks whiz by the home planet from time to time. The Guardian , a British newspaper, reported recently that some NASA scientists have written a report outlining a mission to asteroid 2000SG344. The object is about...

This just in from the hydrocarbon desk at Astronomy.com: Titan’s surface lakes and methane-ice-laden dune seas collectively hold hundreds of times Earth’s bounty of hydrocarbons (oil and gas). It’s a Texas oilman’s dream: hydrocarbons rain from the sky on Titan. To my mind, this could solve a lot of problems. Planetary scientists have been competing with NASA’s fantastically expensive manned space program for decades. Word on the aerospace street...

In a recent blog , I talked about the surprising difficulty of landing heavy crewed payloads on Mars — in fact, its present impossibility, in lieu of new technologies. That's a very big challenge to future Mars exploration, although not at all insurmountable. But what about the dumb stuff? The little things we take for granted on Earth that are actually quite difficult in zero-gravity? No, I don't mean using the toilet, although that's...