(From west to east)

• Juno is in the constellation of Pisces.
• Vesta is at opposition on the 18th in the constellation of Leo.
• Pallas is in the constellation of Serpens.

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

"Hills with a wrinkly radial pattern stand out in a new radar image captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 28, 2009.

The grooved mounds in the picture, which are located in a northern hemisphere region known as Belet, are about 80 kilometers (50 miles) wide and about 60 meters (200 feet) high.

The shapes of these landscape features have not been seen on Titan before, though they bear similarity to spidery features known as coronae on Venus. A corona is a circular to elliptical feature thought to result from the flow of heat in a planet's interior."

Cassini Imaging Team

"NASA's New Horizons mission team marks four years of flight today - and their Pluto-bound spacecraft is sleeping right through the celebration.

Operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., commanded New Horizons into hibernation on Friday after 10 days of maintenance, during which they downloaded Student Dust Counter data from the solid-state recorder, uploaded software updates to the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument, made minor adjustments to the spacecraft's fault-protection system and collected navigation-tracking data."

New Horizons gallery

"ASTEROID BELT -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft re-entered our solar system's asteroid belt today, Nov. 13, and this time it will stay there.

Dawn first entered the belt (whose lower boundary may be defined as the greatest distance Mars gets from the sun (249,230,000 kilometers, or 154,864,000 miles) in June 2008. It remained within the belt for 40 days before its carefully planned orbital path brought it below the asteroid belt's lower boundary.

This time around, Dawn's flight path will remain above this hypothetical lower boundary for the rest of the mission and for the foreseeable future - Dawn will become the first human-made object to take up permanent residence in the asteroid belt."

"NASA's MESSENGER mission team and cartographic experts from the U. S. Geological Survey have created a critical tool for planning the first orbital observations of the planet Mercury -- a global mosaic of the planet that will help scientists pinpoint craters, faults, and other features for observation. The map was created from images taken during the MESSENGER spacecraft's three flybys of the planet and those of Mariner 10 in the 1970s. A presentation on the new global mosaic is being given today at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco."

"PASADENA, Calif. -- Beginning Jan. 18, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter will listen for possible, though improbable, radio transmissions from the Phoenix Mars Lander, which completed five months of studying an arctic Martian site in November 2008.

The solar-powered lander operated two months longer than its three-month prime mission during summer on northern Mars before the seasonal ebb of sunshine ended its work. Since then, Phoenix's landing site has gone through autumn, winter and part of spring. The lander's hardware was not designed to survive the temperature extremes and ice-coating load of an arctic Martian winter.

In the extremely unlikely case that Phoenix survived the winter, it is expected to follow instructions programmed on its computer. If systems still operate, once its solar panels generate enough electricity to establish a positive energy balance, the lander would periodically try to communicate with any available Mars relay orbiters in an attempt to reestablish contact with Earth. During each communications attempt, the lander would alternately use each of its two radios and each of its two antennas.

Odyssey will pass over the Phoenix landing site approximately 10 times each day during three consecutive days of listening this month and two longer listening campaigns in February and March."

"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: Little Progress in Backward Driving - sols 2144-2150, January 13-19, 2010:

"Spirit is still embedded in the area called "Troy" on the west side of Home Plate.

The project has begun backward driving with Spirit as the next technique to try for extrication. On Sol 2145 (Jan. 14, 2010), the first backward drive was performed. Up until this point, all extrication attempts had been with forward driving. Backward driving includes the additional technique of steering the wheels side-to-side before performing each drive step. The hypothesis on the wheel steering is two-fold. It clears out material in front of the wheel and allows material to slough off the face of the wheel trench providing traction under the wheel, and the flat surface of the wheel side (hub) "kicks" against the loose material like a swimmer's frog kick or breast stroke to provide motive force.

This backward driving technique has shown promise on sols 2145 (Jan. 14, 2010), 2147 (Jan. 16, 2010) and 2050 (Jan. 19, 2010) with the rover moving 3 to 4 centimeters (1.2 to 1.6 inches) per drive and the rover climbing in elevation, even with only four functioning drive wheels.

During the last drive, the left-middle wheel experienced a motor stall. The nature of the stall is not known: whether it is an external obstruction (e.g., a rock) or an internal actuator problem. A set of diagnostics have been sequenced on the rover before the next drive is attempted. As of Sol 2150 (Jan. 19, 2010), the rover solar array energy production was to 211 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (tau) of 0.400 and a dust factor of 0.542. Total odometry is 7,730.24 meters (4.80 miles)."

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Driving to 'Concepcion' Crater - sols 2125-2130, January 15-20, 2010 :

"Opportunity has been driving south toward a relatively young impact crater, called "Concepcion." The crater is estimated to be about 1,000 years old, the youngest crater to be explored on Mars.

The rover drove on Sols 2125 (Jan. 15, 2010), 2128 (Jan. 18, 2010) and 2130 (Jan. 20, 2010), totaling more than 170 meters (558 feet). The rover is now only about 100 meters (328 feet) away from the crater. The plan ahead is to conduct a circumnavigation imaging campaign of the 10-meter (33-foot) diameter crater.

The right-front wheel currents have been well-behaved. No improvement has been observed yet in the miniature thermal emission spectrometer (Mini-TES) elevation mirror, which continues to be opened regularly to allow cleaning by the wind.

As of Sol 2130 (Jan. 20, 2010), the solar array energy production was 304 watt-hours, with an atmospheric opacity (tau) of 0.488 and a dust factor of 0.505. Total odometry is 19,216.21 meters (11.94 miles)."

Landing sites

"PASADENA, Calif. -- The most powerful camera aboard a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars will soon be taking photo suggestions from the public. Since arriving at Mars in 2006, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has recorded nearly 13,000 observations of the Red Planet's terrain. Each image covers dozens of square miles and reveals details as small as a desk. Now, anyone can nominate sites for picturesÉ To make camera suggestions, visit http://uahirise.org/suggest/ ."

MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER HIRISE IMAGES
All of the HiRISE images are archived here.