The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, is home of the project administration and mission control for most US planetary probes and other unmanned spacecraft.     The JPL Solar System Exploraton site, which includes overviews of most past, current, and planned planetary exploration missions, has news and information about planetary research and the technologies used in it.     The JPL Planetary Data System (PDS) "archives and distributes scientific data from NASA planetary missions, astronomical observations, and laboratory measurements". You can search all JPL websites using this form (the first text link above leads to a site index): find this: matching: all of the words any of the words use boolean logic   Planetary Missions & Planetary Probe Spacecraft     The JPL Cassini-Huygens Saturn Orbiter entered Saturn's orbit on July 1, 2004, decelerated by the spacecraft's engine burning for 96 minutes, and began sending back high-quality photos of Saturn's rings, moons, and atmosphere. The six-ton spacecraft was launched on October 15, 1997 from the Kennedy Space Center on a Titan IVB/Centaur launch vehicle, swinging past Venus twice and Earth again once to pick up speed from a gravity-assist trajectory on its way to Saturn.     At the JPL site you can learn about the spacecraft and its science objectives, check the probe's current position, and look at the latest images of Saturn and its moons.     The US-built Cassini orbiter carried with it the Huygens Titan lander, built by the European Space Agency, which separated from the larger craft on December 25th, 2004 and landed on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, on January 14, 2005. As it descended by parachute, Huygens explored the thick atmosphere of Titan, sending photos and data back to Earth relayed via the Cassini orbiter.     Titan 24 Sunclock is a free Java program or browser applet which displays an image of Titan showing its current sun- and nightsides, along with the time in 24-hour format.     The JPL Galileo Jupiter Orbiter studied & photographed Jupiter & its moons for almost 8 years before being deorbited to burn up in Jupiter's atmosphere on Sept 21, 2003. The Galileo site includes news, photos, and videos. JPL Galileo Jupiter Data is a searchable database of all the data from the Galileo probe in orbit aroud Jupiter.     The European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft was launched atop a Starsem Soyuz/Fregat LV from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on November 9, 2005, and entered Venus orbit in April, 2006. The 1270 kg spacecraft carries a camera, three spectrometers and a magnetometer to study the Venusian atmosphere and clouds. Venus Express image gallery     The JHU/APL Messenger spacecraft is a Mercury orbiter that was launched on August 3, 2004. Operated by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, Messenger will be the first spacecraft to visit Mercury since Mariner 10 over 30 years ago.     Messenger is on a circuitous "gravity assist" flight path to Mercury. After circling the sun, Messenger flew past Earth on August 2, 2005, using Earth's gravity to change its trajectory. Messenger flew past Venus in October 2006, and flew past Venus again on June 5, 2007, to resize and rotate its trajectory closer to Mercury's orbit. Messenger will then flyby Mercury three times, in January 2008, October 2008 and September 2009, before entering orbit on March 18, 2011.     Even during the flybys, Messenger will map most of the planet in color, including areas unseen by Mariner 10, and measure the composition of the surface, atmosphere and magnetosphere.     The JHU/APL New Horizons spacecraft will be the first mission to probe the dwarf planet Pluto, its companion Charon, and the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our solar system. The 1,000-pound (453-kg) spacecraft was launched by a Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 vehicle from Launch Complex 41 at the Kennedy Space Center on January 19, 2006.     On February 28, 2007, New Horizons took pictures as it flew past Jupiter on its way to Pluto; it will take 9½ years to travel all the way to Pluto, which it will flyby, not orbit, on July 14, 2015. After that, New Horizons will encounter objects in the Kuiper Belt from 2016 to 2020.     Pluto Demoted, Only 8 Planets: In September, 2005, the discovery was announced of an object called 2003 UB313, which is larger than Pluto, and orbits the Sun from a distance three times as far away as Pluto. In September, 2006, the name of this object was officially deemed "Eris," after the Greek goddess of warfare and strife.     The discovery of Eris led the International Astronomical Union to change their official definition of a planet, and deem Eris and Pluto "dwarf planets," leaving the Solar System with 8 planets instead of 9.     At the 26th IAU General Assembly in August, 2006, the IAU resolved: (1) A planet1 is a celestial body that     (a) is in orbit around the Sun,     (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and     (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. (2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that     (a) is in orbit around the Sun,     (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape2,     (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and     (d) is not a satellite. (3) All other objects3, except satellites, orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies".     1 The eight planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.     2 An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects to the dwarf planet or to another category.     3 These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs),comets, and other small bodies. The IAU further resolves: Pluto is a "dwarf planet" by the above definition and is recognized as the prototype of a new category of Trans-Neptunian Objects1.     1 An IAU process will be established to select a name for this category.     NASA Solar System Missions links to the home pages of all ongoing NASA planetary projects.     The European Space Agency ESA Solar System page links to the home pages of all ongoing ESA planetary projects.     The NASA History Office has countless pages of history information and images to view from past planetary missions such as Mariner, Pioneer, Voyager, Viking, Magellan, and others.

ESA's Huygens probe returned this color view of the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, on January 14, 2005. Objects in the photo are small rock-sized, not boulders. The two objects just below the middle of the image are about 15 centimeters (left) and 4 centimeters (center) across, at a distance of about 85 centimetres from the probe. The surface of Titan is a mixture of water and hydrocarbon ice. Huygens photos MISSIONS: NASA - ESA - JAXA KENNEDY SPACE CENTER: Shuttle Countdown Online KSC Video Feeds webcams galore NASA TV LIVE: RealVideo - Windows Media alternate RealVideo - sound only RealAudio POSTION TRACKING: Shuttle - ISS - ESA LAUNCH SCHEDULES: KSC - SpaceflightNow Space.com - Space-Launcher.com SPACE & ASTRONOMY: JPL Space Calendar See also: Science Gifts, Astronomy, Mars, Asteroids, Meteorites, & Comets, Space, and NASA   Planets News Sky & Telescope is the world's leading source of information about astronomy and space science. Save 26%! (lowest rate) Google Usenet Newsgroups alt.sci.planetary alt.planets (11 groups) sci.astro (8 groups) sci.space (7 groups) sci.space.news gov.us.fed.nasa.announce Solar System Search: The DMOZ Open Directory searches for keywords in website titles and descriptions (not page content). You can limit your search to the Solar System links category, or search all astronomy or science links. find this: in: All Solar System Mars Sites Jupiter Sites All Astronomy Space Missions NASA Sites Space Sites All Science

  Planetary Maps and Images

JPL Planetary Maps by David Seal
Evil Dr Ganymede's Planetary Map Hub
Space Renderings by Björn Jónsson
Planetary Image Maps by James Hastings-Trew

The US Geological Survey Astrogeology Research Program has free downloadable maps (and cut & paste globes) of several planets, some moons, and some asteroids, including Venus, Earth's moon, Mars, and Jupiter's four Galilean moons, Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io. Some of the maps are unlabeled photomosaics, some are geologic maps, others are labeled image maps with named features, and some are in Map-a-Planet clickable online atlas versions.

The NASA-GSFC Catalog of Spaceborne Imaging is a planetary image archive from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, with over 500 comet, asteroid, and planet photographs collected by a variety of NASA spacecraft.

The NASA-JPL Planetary Photojournal is another way to access planet images from NASA spacecraft.

NASA Space Observatorium has images from and info on NASA's planetary, deep space exploration, and astronomy programs.

NASA GSFC SkyView is a virtual observatory that generates images of any part of the sky at wavelengths ranging from radio to gamma rays. Like TerraServer pointed up instead of down, only moreso.

The JPL Solar System Simulator allows you to view perspective images to and from 32 planets and moons from any virtual point in the solar system.

  Extrasolar Planets

The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, from the Paris Observatory, has statistics and links about extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs.

Spectrashift provides information and links about amateur astronomers looking for extrasolar planets using redshift radial velocity measurements.

  NASA Books (NASA Special Publications) & Other Astronomy Books Online

Some of the books below are Adobe .pdf files, which are nice for reading materials offline. If you would like to read NASA's .html online books, like most of those below, when you are offline, you can "harvest" the pages and images for free using HTTrack, a very useful freeware website capture and offline browsing tool. HTTrack also works well with groups of .pdf files linked to from a page or directory. Evolution of the Solar System SP-345 (1976) Origin of the Moon conference papers (1984) LPI Ranger Photographs of the Moon text & images from SP-61, SP-62, SP-63, SP-111, & SP-112, (1964-66) two 4.6 MB .pdf files & many jpegs LPI Lunar Map Catalog LPI Consolidated Lunar Atlas LPI Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon 675 photos + annotations LPI Apollo Image Atlas almost 25,000 lunar images, + earth, astronauts & hardware Basaltic Volcanism on the Terrestrial Planets (1981) Planetary Geology in the 1980s SP-467 (1985) The Voyage of Mariner 10: Mission to Venus and Mercury SP-424 (1978) Atlas of Mercury, SP-423 (1978), from Mariner 10 images Magellan: The Unveiling of Venus JPL 400-345 (1989) Far Travelers: The Exploring Machines SP-480 (1985) Pioneer Odyssey, SP-349/396 (1977), about the Pioneer 10 Jupiter flyby Voyager 1 and 2 Atlas of Six Saturnian Satellites SP-474 (1984) Uplink-Downlink: A History of the Deep Space Network, 1957-1997 SP-4227 (2001)     To read Uplink-Downlink offline, go to the SP-4227 directory and use HTTrack to download. Deep Space Communications and Navigation Series page linking to 6 .pdf tech books over 100 NASA online books are listed on the NASA News page