James Tuttle Keane

#DPS2026 question - are the talks recorded and available for viewing later? Too much overlapping stuff.

Greetings, #DPS2026 🐈🪐🐕

The old Theia is dead, a new Moon struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters. . . er, new models for the formation of our Moon. Adeene Denton (@spacewhalerider.com) and colleagues showed a way to smooth the process of Moon formation. 🔭🧪 eos.org/articles/was...

Tick tock ⏰ Bepi and Mio are waiting to hear from you! There are only a few days left to send them a #WelcomeToMercury message and get the chance to win a trip to ESA in Darmstadt, Germany, this December. Do not miss out 👇 esa.int/WelcomeToMercury 🔭 🧪

Just me talking science with Spock 🖖 For JPL’s 90th / Star Trek’s 60th birthdays, I was interviewed by Ethan Peck, from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. He is awesome. youtu.be/FxQ310zorVQ?...

“The internet is a store but it used to be a library” hits me like a slug to the chest

Team “Howlocene”

Ha! Here’s a joke mission patch for a Jupiter rover I sketched back in 2017.

Phobos (including Saturn and Deimos) in the latest release of @esa.int Mars Express Can you spot Saturn? Full size & more info: flic.kr/p/2sFoFaS 🔭🧪 Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY ESA Mars Express Release September 15, 2026 Note: Saturn has been enlarged by 300%

Interested in ideas of how humans can explore the moon? The @nationalacademies.org have a webinar on Oct. 21st as part of the release of a new report, "Human Exploration Across the Moon". You can sign up to watch the webinar at the link. #planetaryscience www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DEP...

Tenure-track faculty job alert at CU Boulder! Hire is through @cires.colorado.edu and departmental affiliation will be decided in consultation with the new hire. jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

New Horizons LORRI image colorized using MVIC CH4/blue filter data, processed to roughly approximate natural color. Taken on March 1, 2007. Distance: 2.3 million km Credit: NASA / JHU / APL / Gordan Ugarković live.staticflickr.com/6003/6008547...

This weekend is the JPL open house! I’m excited for the community to see Endurance, and all of the other exciting things being developed on lab.

Yesterday, KISS hosted an open house for our ever-growing community. To learn about the work that KISS makes possible, watch our introductory video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PirZ... Study Proposal Concepts are due Oct 30. Visit our website for more: www.kiss.caltech.edu/apply/

Sales are live for my scale model volcano tissue box covers! Use GSA26 for 10% off through Saturday. I’ve got some really unique colors in this launch. But more importantly, this batch includes the first ever Mammoth Mountain boxes in both large and small sizes! phaneritic.etsy.com

It's #Spacetober day 7, Venus. #SciArt #spaceart Artwork of the Venera 9 spacecraft on the surface of Venus. The Venera probes were a series of ten successful missions sent to Venus by the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Venera 9 was launched on 8 June 1975. 1/2

Bepi and Mio are almost at Mercury, and they would love to hear from you 💌 Send them a #WelcomeToMercury message for a chance to win a trip to ESA's mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, this December. Wish them well 👉 esa.int/WelcomeToMercury 🫶 🔭

Cool (or warm) Kilauea #volcano satellite imagery (interferometry). Inferred position of magma wedge are the yellow lines. The blue (red) regions is movement away from (toward) the satellite. Ground "crinkled" to make room for the dike wedging itself up through it around the yellow dashed lines. 🧪

At today's National Academies CAPS (Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences), NASA planetary leadership all but confirmed that the agency is no longer providing the VenSAR radar for the @esa.int ESA EnVision mission. This isn't a surprise, but it's still hugely disappointing. (1/2)

A few months, I got asked to do something amazing… 🖖 youtu.be/QCOwkvwYmmY?...

New Horizons is now *three days away* from shutting off its two heliophysics instruments, simply because NASA has not provided the $2M in funding it had promised to the mission last year or this year. There is no science basis for shutting these off. Our earlier coverage:

Portrait: Europa and Jupiter - Composite Image - Nasa’s Juno PJ37 - From Andrea Luck (andrealuck.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2mGHAHC

I have a new paper out! Over the weekend I'll do a thread on what the Solar System can tell us about rocky exoplanets— but for now, enjoy this to-scale set of cross sections I made of the rocky worlds in *this* system! (They're all different, but still all variations on a theme...)

Occasionally a job application will have an "Other Attachments in Support of Your Application" category and every time I have to stop myself from attaching this

Please repost! Drexel announced that it will close the Academy of Natural Sciences public museum- the oldest nat history museum in the US. There are 2 petitions to support the academy. Please sign both & come to our rally Tues. actionnetwork.org/petitions/pe... www.change.org/p/the-academ...

Sharing a terrific article by project scientist Ashwin Vasavada describing a day in the life of Curiosity Mars rover science operations. theconversation.com/mars-rovers-...

Register: carnegiescience.edu/strange-new-...

I’ll be handing out these new Strange New Worlds stickers at @carnegiescience.bsky.social’s “Science of Star Trek” #NeighborhoodLecture next week! Hope to see you there! (If you’re confused about why there’s a dinosaur, go watch the latest season of Star Trek!)

Had to accelerate this story, which means I got to dwell on far less termination shock science than I would have liked.

TAPS is now on Bluesky! We are excited to announce that TAPS is back for 2027! Submissions are open now. TAPS 2027 will feature both data art and fine art with this year’s theme being “As We Float on By: 50 Golden Years of Voyager”

BepiColombo is almost arriving at Mercury... but first, 👋 MPO and Mio must say farewell to their 'trusty engine' MTM (Mercury Transfer Module) 📺Watch live with us on 3 September, 13:45 CEST 👉 www.esa.int/Enabling_Sup...

Enceladus in the E Ring - From Val Klavans (valklavans.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/fpHjw2

This week's #SciArt by PSI co-founder William Hartmann features the Sun, Earth & Moon in an energizing and vibrant view of our little corner of the Solar System. This painting is a featured piece of the William K Hartmann Art Collection at the PSI HQ buff.ly/iOao6Ha

During the recent Total Solar Eclipse the South Korean Danuri spacecraft obtained a nice view of Earth from Lunar orbit with the Moons shadow just visible on Earth. Here is their image, with attribution added, my colorized version and the nearly simultaneous EPIC-DSCOVR image used for the color.

An amazing example of shadowing and albedo on the Moon

Stephanie Menten—there are some unusual pits and troughs on the satellites of the ice giants. Could thermal erosion—where (cryo)lava flows melt the substrate and leave a depression—be responsible? Modeling works for Triton; less so for Ariel, where tectonics may be required. #AOGS2026

Christos Ntinos—Developing a new “super resolution” Cassini VIMS map of Enceladus. The map can provide insight about physical properties (grain size, crystallinity, etc.) which are useful for both science and future exploration—like the ESA L4 mission concept. #AOGS2026

Shuang Yang—Chang’e 7 will land near the Moon’s south pole Shackleton crater later this year and deploy (via tether) a seismometer that is planned to survive for 8 years. This might be the first node of a long-lived *international* geophysical network! #AOGS2026

Ralph Lorenz—Huygens showed that Titan can be wet, even at low latitudes. As Dragonfly flies across Titan, the odds it’ll land in mud are low (<1%), and if so, the stickiness will be again to sticky wheat dough (and Dragonfly could still takeoff). #AOGS2026

51 years ago I painted a trio of Viking related works for NASA HQ including the widely reproduced one of the landing on Mars. I have reimagined the Landing portrayal in updated form using digital methods of visualization and painting. I chose the same angle but with reality replacing anticipation.