(From west to east)

• Juno is in the constellation of Aquarius.
• Julia is in the constellation of Pegasus.
• Melpomene is in the constellation of Cetus.
• Fortuna is in the constellation of Taurus.
• Vesta is in the constellation of Leo.
• Pallas is in the constellation of Virgo.

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

"On November 2, 2009, Cassini will make its deepest plume passage yet, flying 102.7 kilometers (63.8 miles) from the surface of Enceladus.

The plume passage will allow in situ measurements by fields-and-particles instruments such as the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer and the Cosmic Dust Analyzer, to gain an understanding of plume and surface composition, and to investigate temporal variability in the plume by comparing with data from previous flybys.

This is the seventh targeted flyby of Enceladus, sometimes referred to as "E-7."

Cassini Imaging Team

"New Horizons sails silently today through another milestone on the way to its historic reconnaissance of the Pluto system, reaching the halfway point between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus.

The NASA spacecraft will reach 14.41 astronomical units from the Sun — 1.34 billion miles, or nearly 14 1/2 times the distance between the Earth and Sun — between 6-7 p.m. EDT "Only five operating spacecraft have ever journeyed this far, and only one — the storied Voyager 2 mission — still had an encounter planned even farther out," says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. "New Horizons is on its way to the farthest planetary encounter ever, at just over 32 astronomical units, which is a quarter-billion miles beyond the current planetary encounter record set at Neptune back in 1989."

New Horizons gallery

"Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have received a transmission from the Dawn spacecraft confirming it has re-ignited its ion propulsion system. For those of you scoring at home, Thruster # 1 received the honors. Over the course of its eight-year mission, first to asteroid Vesta and then off to dwarf planet Ceres, Dawn's three ion engines will accumulate 2,000 days of operation."

"MESSENGER successfully flew by Mercury yesterday, gaining a critical gravity assist that will enable it to enter orbit about Mercury in 2011 and capturing images of five percent of the planet never before seen. With more than 90 percent of the planetÕs surface already imaged, MESSENGERÕs science team had drafted an ambitious observation campaign designed to tease out additional details from features uncovered during the first two flybys. But an unexpected signal loss prior to closest approach hampered those plans."

"PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's long-lived Mars Odyssey spacecraft has completed an eight-month adjustment of its orbit, positioning itself to look down at the day side of the planet in mid-afternoon instead of late afternoon.

This change gains sensitivity for infrared mapping of Martian minerals by the orbiter's Thermal Emission Imaging System camera. Orbit design for Odyssey's first seven years of observing Mars used a compromise between what worked best for the infrared mapping and for another onboard instrument.

"The orbiter is now overhead at about 3:45 in the afternoon instead of 5 p.m., so the ground is warmer and there is more thermal energy for the camera's infrared sensors to detect," said Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., project scientist for Mars Odyssey."

"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: Amnesia-like Symptoms Return - sols 2063-2069, Oct. 22-28, 2009:

"Spirit has experienced another complication. On Sol 2065 (Oct. 24, 2009), Spirit experienced a reset event and a problem with mounting its non-volatile flash memory. The rover resumed activities without using its flash memory, instead using its volatile random-access memory (RAM) to store telemetry. When the rover goes to sleep, telemetry stored only in RAM is lost. The project has instructed the rover to stay awake until its afternoon relay pass with Mars Odyssey to return the day's data before napping.

The project is planning to reformat the rover's flash memory file system to restore it to normal operation. Spirit is otherwise in good health.

As of Sol 2069 (Oct. 28, 2009), Spirit's solar-array energy production was 411 watt-hours. On Sol 2064 (Oct. 23, 2009), atmospheric opacity (tau) was 0.599. Total odometry remains at 7,729.97 meters (4.80 miles)."

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Southbound Progress - sols 2043-2049, Oct. 22-29, 2009:

"Opportunity has been making good progress driving. After completing a survey of meteorites recently, Opportunity has turned south around the point of a large ripple field. Eventually, the rover will resume heading east towards Endeavour crater.

The rover drove southward on sols 2043, 2045, 2047, 2048 and 2049 (Oct. 22, 25, 27, 28 and 29, 2009), totaling over 280 meters (918 feet). The rover commands the miniature thermal emission spectrometer (Mini-TES) elevation mirror open each sol in an attempt to clear some of the putative dust off the elevation mirror. To date, no improvement in the Mini-TES has been observed.

As of Sol 2049 (Oct. 29, 2009), Opportunity's solar-array energy production is 419 watt-hours, with an atmospheric opacity (tau) of 0.580 and a dust factor of 0.571. Total odometry is 18,622.44 meters (11.57 miles)."

Landing sites

"This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows channels to the southeast of Hale crater on southern Mars. Taken by the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, this view covers an area about 3 kilometers (2 miles) wide.

Channels associated with impact craters were once thought to be quite rare. Scientists proposed a variety of unusual circumstances to explain them, such as impacts by comets or precipitation caused by the impact event. As more of Mars is photographed with high-resolution imagery, more craters surrounded by channel systems are being discovered."

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