(From west to east)

• Hebe is in the constellation of Capricornus.

• Iris is in the constellation of Aries.

• Nysa is at opposition on the 29th in the constellation of Gemini.

• Melpomeme is in the constellation of Cancer.

• Massalia is in the constellation of Cancer.

• Vesta is in the constellation of Virgo.

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

Full-Res Image: PIA08821

"This spectacular image of Saturn's clouds looks obliquely across the high northern latitudes. The Sun is low on the horizon here, making the vertical extent of the clouds easier to see. Cloud bands surrounding the vortex at lower left rise above their surroundings, casting shadows toward the bottom of the image.

Some motion blur is apparent in this view.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers on Oct. 30, 2006. Cassini was then at a distance of approximately 1.2 million kilometers (700,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 142 degrees. Image scale is 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel."

Cassini Imaging Team

"The New Horizons team got a faint glimpse of the missionÕs distant, main planetary target when one of the spacecraftÕs telescopic cameras spotted Pluto for the first time. The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took the pictures during an optical navigation test on Sept. 21-24, and stored them on the spacecraftÕs data recorder until their recent transmission back to Earth."

Update, Nov. 22, 6:15 p.m. PST: NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity did not detect any signal from the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter on Wednesday during an attempt to get the orbiter to transmit to the rover.

Mars Global Surveyor has surpassed all expectations," said Michael Meyer, NASA's lead scientist for Mars exploration at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "It has already been the most productive science mission to Mars, and it will yield more discoveries as the treasury of observations it has made continues to be analyzed for years to come." Its camera has returned more than 240,000 images to Earth.

The orbiter has not communicated with Earth since Nov. 2. Preliminary indications are that a solar panel became difficult to pivot, raising the possibility that the spacecraft may no longer be able to generate enough power to communicate. Engineers are also exploring other possible explanations for the radio silence."

Image of the Week - November 27, 2006

"The following new image taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available:

• Dust-Mantled Olympus Mons Flows (Released 27 November 2006)

  Image Caption:

  Dust-covered lava flows on the lowermost south flank of Olympus Mons are captured in this 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) wide Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) view acquired during northern summer on 12 October 2006. One leveed lava channel just south (below) the center left of the image disappears into a thick, pitted and cratered dust mantle. Sunlight illuminates the scene from the left/upper left. The image is located near 13.8N, 134.1W. North is toward the top/upper right.

• All of the Mars Global Surveyor images are archived here.

Information about how to submit requests is online at the new Mars Orbiter Camera Target Request Site, at http://www.msss.com/plan/intro"

Newly-released MOC images can be seen in the MOC Gallery, a website maintained by Malin Space Science Systems, the company that built and operates MOC for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA.

Mars Global Surveyor was launched in November 1996 and has been in Mars orbit since September 1997. It began its primary mapping mission on March 8, 1999. Mars Global Surveyor is the first mission in a long-term program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO.

"Every spring brings violent eruptions to the south polar ice cap of Mars, according to researchers interpreting new observations by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

Jets of carbon dioxide gas erupting from the ice cap as it warms in the spring carry dark sand and dust high aloft. The dark material falls back to the surface, creating dark patches on the ice cap which have long puzzled scientists. Deducing the eruptions of carbon dioxide gas from under the warming ice cap solves the riddle of the spots. It also reveals that this part of Mars is much more dynamically active than had been expected for any part of the planet."

"A simulated fly-through using the newly assembled imagery is available online at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/missions/odyssey/20060313.html.

The fly-through plus tools for wandering across and zooming into the large image are at http://themis.asu.edu."

Mars Odyssey THEMIS Images
Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) website: http://themis.asu.edu/

November 20-24, 2006

The following new images from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft are now available:

• Gigas Sulci (Released 20 November 2006)
  
• Lava Flows (Released 21 November 2006)
  
• Dunes (Released 22 November 2006)
  
• Ascraeus Mons (Released 23 November 2006)
  
• Aeolis Planum (Released 24 November 2006)
  
• All of the THEMIS images are archived here.

The Odyssey data are available through a new online access system established by the Planetary Data System at: http://starbrite.jpl.nasa.gov/pds/"

Spirit Status: Spirit's 'Arm' Busy Checking New Targets - sol 1013-1016, November 13, 2006

"After Spirit's successful 0.71-meter (28-inch) bump on sol 1010, the team has new targets in the robotic arm's work volume for the first time in 204 sols. There is some interesting light and dark material within arm's reach and this week the team planned a robotic arm campaign including a microscopic imager mosaic, four hours of alpha particle X-ray spectrometer integration and 43 hours of Moessbauer spectrometer integration. Spirit is receiving a little over 320 Watt-hours now and is able to occasionally use the Moessbauer or alpha particle X-ray spectrometer overnight."

Opportunity Status: Opportunity on the Move after Solar Conjunction - sol 968-995, November 13, 2006

"Opportunity is healthy and has driven away from the "Cape Verde" promontory for further exploration around the rim of "Victoria Crater." Over the course of the next week, the rover will make its way clockwise around Victoria Crater to the next promontory, "Cape St. Mary." Opportunity will then image the northeast-facing cliff of Cape Verde to characterize lateral changes in layers of the crater wall. Along the way, Opportunity will be using the panoramic camera to scout a safe place to drive into the crater.

During the drive on Sol 992, rover planners performed the first step of the in-flight checkout of one of the rover's new technologies: visual target tracking (VTT). This first checkout included picking a target to track, driving, and testing the rover's knowledge of how its position changed relative to the target. The rover performed this activity as planned. The next step will be to execute a drive to a VTT target.

During the solar conjunction period from sol 970 to sol 984 (Oct. 16 to 30), Opportunity used its panoramic camera to image Victoria Crater from the Cape Verde promontory, collected 3.5 hours of Moessbauer spectrometer data each sol on the hole that the rock abrasion tool drilled at target "Cha," and performed its standard sol-to-sol atmospheric and remote sensing observations. Opportunity collected more than 50 hours of Moessbauer data on Cha."

Landing sites

"Some new, high-resolution images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show channels in a fossil delta, troughs in sand dunes and hardware from the landing of the rover Opportunity."