January 12, 2009 - Rendezvous and Rocket Mail

Published in cooperation with The Planetary Society

Spend the year in space, one week at a time

Recent Weeks

May 14, 2012 - Monkey Nebula

May 7, 2012 - Getting a Grip on INTELSAT

April 30, 2012 - Dust in the Wind

April 23, 2012 - Celebrate Astronomy Day

April 16, 2012 - Rover Rides Again

April 9, 2012 - Mercury’s Marvelous Morphology

April 2, 2012 - A Matter of Truss

March 26, 2012 - Hubble Bubble

March 19, 2012 - Rocket Pioneer Centennial

March 12, 2012 - Southern Lights on Saturn

March 5, 2012 - A New Star in Town

February 27, 2012 - Hubble Upgrade

February 20, 2012 - Sideways Supernova

February 13, 2012 - Auroras Gone Wild

February 6, 2012 - Hubble Telescope Tune-Up

January 30, 2012 - Lunar Orbiter Liftoff

January 23, 2012 - Magellan Turns up the Stereo

January 16, 2012 - Southern Sibling Sees Stars

January 9, 2012 - Hitching a Ride Home

January 2, 2012 - Transforming the Space Frontier

December 26, 2011 - These Laws Can't Be Broken

December 19, 2011 - Long and Winding Road

December 12, 2011 - Blast from the Past

December 5, 2011 - It’s Just Like Folding a Map

November 28, 2011 - A Warmer, Wetter Mars

November 21, 2011 - Spy in the Sky

Customer Comment

Many thanks. As usual, don't know how I'd get along without the 'Year In Space' desk planner!! : - )

--Dana P., Petaluma, CA

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2012 Desk Calendar

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144 full-color pages
6" x 9", spiral bound
Art-quality paper

Weekly photo essay
Daily Moon phases
Night sky events
Space trivia
Holidays
Room for notes/appts

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Customer Comment

I love the photos in this calendar. I can use them in the classroom or lab to inspire students. Not only are they a source of information, but they are also a source of hope for the future of the human race, and an indication of what we can achieve when we put our minds to it.

--Susan P., Melbourne, Australia

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The Week in Space

January 12-18, 2009

Magellan Sets Sail The STS-30 crew wasted no time getting to work during its four-day mission twenty years ago this week. Less than four hours after the space shuttle Atlantis reached orbit, its crew of five astronauts released the Magellan spacecraft from the shuttle’s cargo bay. About an hour after deployment, with Atlantis at a safe distance, the Inertial Upper Stage rocket attached to Magellan fired, sending the spacecraft out of Earth orbit toward a rendezvous with Venus, where it would spend more than four years mapping Earth’s cloud-shrouded neighbor. Magellan was the first American planetary mission in eleven years and the first launched from a shuttle. Between 1989 and 1994, Magellan made radar maps of more than ninety-eight percent of the surface of Venus.

Image credit: NASA