(From west to east)

• Pallas is in the constellation of Boötes.
• Eunomia is in the constellation of Sagittarius.
• Flora is in the constellation of Aquarius.
• Laetitia is in the constellation of Pisces.
• Hebe is in the constellation of Cetus.
• Iris is in the constellation of Taurus.

• Information about the Minor Planets can be found at the Minor Planet Observer website.

"The answer to the mystery of dune patterns on Saturn's moon Titan did turn out to be blowing in the wind. It just wasn't from the direction many scientists expected.

Basic principles describing the rotation of planetary atmospheres and data from the European Space Agency's Huygens probe led to circulation models that showed surface winds streaming generally east-to-west around Titan's equatorial belt. But when NASA's Cassini spacecraft obtained the first images of dunes on Titan in 2005, the dunes' orientation suggested the sands - and therefore the winds - were moving from the opposite direction, or west to east.

A new paper by Tetsuya Tokano in press with the journal Aeolian Research seeks to explain the paradox. It explains that seasonal changes appear to reverse wind patterns on Titan for a short period. These gusts, which occur intermittently for perhaps two years, sweep west to east and are so strong they do a better job of transporting sand than the usual east-to-west surface winds. Those east-to-west winds do not appear to gather enough strength to move significant amounts of sand."

Cassini Imaging Team

"In early 2007 New Horizons flew through the Jupiter system, getting a speed-boost from the giant planet's gravity while snapping stunning, close-up images of Jupiter and its largest moons. Fast forward to 2010 and New Horizons has given us another glimpse of old friend Jupiter, this time from a vantage point more than 16 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, and almost 1000 times as far away as when New Horizons reconnoitered Jupiter. While the planet is too far for the camera to pick up the swirling clouds and brewing, Earth-sized storms it saw just three years ago, "the picture is a dramatic reminder of just how far New Horizons, moving about a million miles a day, has traveled," says mission Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute."

LORRI Looks Back

New Horizons gallery

"Engineers are studying the reaction wheels on NASA's Dawn spacecraft after automatic sensors detected excess friction building up in one of them and powered it off early on the morning of June 17, 2010. Reaction wheels spin to help a spacecraft maintain attitude control, and Dawn, which is exploring the asteroid belt, uses three wheels in normal operations.

The three other reaction wheels are functioning normally. Mission managers said plans for Dawn to visit the asteroid Vesta in 2011 and 2012 and dwarf planet Ceres in 2015 will not be not affected."

"The American Geophysical Union has selected a research paper detailing observations of Mercury's magnetosphere during the probe's third flyby as a "Research Highlight" in today's issue of Eos, the AGU's weekly online and print newspaper. "Observations of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves along the dusk-side boundary of Mercury's magnetosphere during MESSENGER's third flyby," by Scott Boardsen and coauthors, originally published in Geophysical Research Letters, is available online at http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL043606.shtml."

"PASADENA, Calif. - A camera aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has helped develop the most accurate global Martian map ever. Researchers and the public can access the map via several websites and explore and survey the entire surface of the Red Planet. The map was constructed using nearly 21,000 images from the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, a multi-band infrared camera on Odyssey. Researchers at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility in Tempe, in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have been compiling the map since THEMIS observations began eight years ago. The pictures have been smoothed, matched, blended and cartographically controlled to make a giant mosaic. Users can pan around images and zoom into them. At full zoom, the smallest surface details are 100 meters (330 feet) wide. While portions of Mars have been mapped at higher resolution, this map provides the most accurate view so far of the entire planet. The new map is available at: http://www.mars.asu.edu/maps/?layer=thm_dayir_100m_v11."

"A simulated fly-through using the newly assembled imagery is available online.

The fly-through plus tools for wandering across and zooming into the large image are at THEMIS."

Daily Mars Odyssey THEMIS Images
Can be found at the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) website.

The Odyssey data are available through a new online access system established by the Planetary Data System.

SPIRIT UPDATE: Spirit Remains Silent at Troy - sols 2321-2329, July 14-22, 2010:

"Spirit remains silent at her location called "Troy" on the west side of Home Plate. No communication has been received from the rover since Sol 2210 (March 22, 2010).

It is likely that Spirit has experienced a low-power fault and has turned off all sub-systems, including communication and gone into a deep sleep. While sleeping, the rover will use the available solar array energy to recharge her batteries. When the batteries recover to a sufficient state of charge, Spirit will wake-up and begin to communicate.

There is the additional risk that the rover may trip a mission clock fault. If that happens, the rover would remain asleep until the batteries have recharged sufficiently, and there is enough sunlight on the solar arrays to wake the rover. With the southern winter solstice back on May 13, 2010, solar energy levels and temperatures are expected to be improving.

Total odometry is unchanged at 7,730.50 meters (4.80 miles)."

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Opportunity in Good Health and Continues to Drive, Despite Lack of Downlink - sols 2301-2307, July 15-21, 2010:

"Due to Odyssey's safing event none of the planned Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) downlink passes for this period occurred.

All available X-band passes (which are normally uplink only) were changed to two-way, but supportable downlink data rates for these passes are low, and only basic engineering telemetry was received. However, this was enough data to determine that the rover continued to be in good health.

As a result of the lack of downlink data, very little in the way of activity was performed on the rover. A drive that had been designed based on Sol 2300 (July 14, 2010) data was uplinked and executed on Sol 2301 (July 15, 2010), and the telemetry available indicates that this drive ran nominally.

Insufficient data is available to update power numbers, but as of Sol 2300 (July 14, 2010), solar array energy production had improved to 492 watt-hours, atmospheric opacity (Tau) was 0.223 and the solar array dust factor was 0.700.

Total odometry as of Sol 2307 (July 21, 2010), is estimated at approximately 21,830 meters (21.83 kilometers, or 13.56 miles)."

Landing sites