(From west to east)

• Iris is in the constellation of Gemini.

• Vesta is in the constellation of Ophiuchus.

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

"Stunning details in Saturn's clouds suggest movement within bands of atmosphere. This false color enhancement makes visible an exciting level of detail in the bright and dark bands that is more easily seen at Jupiter than at Saturn. See Jupiter Clouds, True Color and False to Show Heights for natural and false color Cassini views of Jupiter. Saturn's southern hemisphere seems to fade into the blackness of space in this view.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 752 (red channel), 890 (blue channel) and 728 (green channel) nanometers. The view was acquired on Feb. 2, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1 million kilometers (600,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 57 kilometers (36 miles) per pixel. "

Cassini Imaging Team

"This five-frame sequence of New Horizons images captures the giant plume from Io's Tvashtar volcano. Snapped by the probe's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) as the spacecraft flew past Jupiter earlier this year, this first-ever "movie" of an Io plume clearly shows motion in the cloud of volcanic debris, which extends 330 kilometers (200 miles) above the moon's surface. Only the upper part of the plume is visible from this vantage point - the plume's source is 130 kilometers (80 miles) below the edge of Io's disk, on the far side of the moon.

The appearance and motion of the plume is remarkably similar to an ornamental fountain on Earth, replicated on a gigantic scale. The knots and filaments that allow us to track the plume's motion are still mysterious, but this movie is likely to help scientists understand their origin, as well as provide unique information on the plume dynamics."

"WASHINGTON - After studying Mars four times as long as originally planned, NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter appears to have succumbed to battery failure caused by a complex sequence of events involving the onboard computer memory and ground commands.

The causes were released today in a preliminary report by an internal review board. The board was formed to look more in-depth into why NASA's Mars Global Surveyor went silent in November 2006 and recommend any processes or procedures that could increase safety for other spacecraft.

Mars Global Surveyor last communicated with Earth on Nov. 2, 2006. Within 11 hours, depleted batteries likely left the spacecraft unable to control its orientation.

"The loss of the spacecraft was the result of a series of events linked to a computer error made five months before the likely battery failure," said board Chairperson Dolly Perkins, deputy director-technical of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md."

• 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.

"Using observations by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, scientists have discovered that water ice lies at variable depths over small-scale patches on Mars.

The findings draw a much more detailed picture of underground ice on Mars than was previously available. They suggest that when NASA's next Mars mission, the Phoenix Mars Lander, starts digging to icy soil on an arctic plain in 2008, it might find the depth to the ice differs in trenches just a few feet apart. The new results appear in the May 3, 2007, issue of the journal Nature."

"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 http://themis.asu.edu."

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

May 21-25, 2007

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

• Fractures (Released 21 May 2007)
  
• Windstreak (Released 22 May 2007)
  
• Dunes on the Move (Released 23 May 2007)
  
• Dust Devil Tracks (Released 24 May 2007)
  
• Channel (Released 25 May 2007)
  
• 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: Remarkable Rover Continues to Astonish - sol 1200-1206, May 31, 2007

"Spirit is still making new discoveries despite dragging its feet, so to speak, after losing use of the right front wheel 426 sols, or Martian days, ago. In the process of creating small trenches while traversing Martian terrain, the dragging right front wheel revealed one of the most astonishing discoveries so far -- exceptionally high silica content in Martian soil, indicative of water at some point in the past. Two of Spirit's scientific instruments -- the alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer and the miniature thermal emission spectrometer -- measured a composition of about 90 percent pure silica in a soil target known as "Gertrude Weise.""

Opportunity Status: Opportunity Studies Rocks Representative of Crater Wall - sol 1171-1177, May 25, 2007

"Opportunity is healthy and continues to circumnavigate "Victoria Crater" back toward "Duck Bay." While stationed at the "Madrid/Guadarrama" outcrop on the "Cape of Good Hope," Opportunity has been studying a cobble with unusual spectral characteristics as measured by the panoramic camera.

The cobbles appear to be similar to two rock faces, nicknamed "Madrid" and "Guadarrama," exposed in the wall of the crater. Because the crater walls are hard to reach, scientists hope to get an idea of their composition by examining similar cobbles nearby. These rocks have different color properties from other materials seen at Victoria Crater and are believed to be crater ejecta. They are chock full of "big blueberries" -- small, round rocks.

On the rover's 1,172nd sol, or Martian day (May 11, 2007), Opportunity performed a thermal inertia experiment on a soil target to complete measurements inside and outside of the dark streaks on the northern side of the crater. This experiment measured temperature-related properties of the soil."

Landing sites

"NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter put itself into safe mode -- a precautionary status with minimized activities -- on March 14. It remained healthy and in communication with Earth, but with no science observations, while the flight team examined engineering data. On March 20, the team brought the spacecraft back out of safe mode.

Science instruments were powered up March 21 and are resuming normal science operations today, March 22.

When it went into safe mode, the spacecraft switched, for the first time in the mission, to a backup ("B") duplicate flight computer on board. Diagnosis of the "A" computer has not yet revealed what caused the switch to the B side."