Opportunity has dipped its toes into Victoria Crater, stopping at a band of bright bedrock partway down the slope of the crater. The rover will bring its suite of instruments to bear as soon as mission managers are sure that safety checks (needed because of the 25 degree tilt of the rover) are working.

"This will be the first of several stops within this band of rock," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the science payloads on Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit. "By sampling it at several different levels in the crater, we're hoping to figure out the processes that led to its formation and its very distinctive appearance." more...

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There's nothing like waking up and watching a successful rocket launch! After a relatively minor hold, the Dawn spacecraft was launched from Florida this morning on its journey to Ceres and Vesta (and possibly a few smaller encounters). Next up for the mission are a series of system "wakeups" and a slow "throttling up" of the vehicle's ion engines (for the earlier posting on Dawn, please see this entry).

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Japan launched its first probe to the Moon, Kaguya (or "Selene"), since its successful Hiten-Hagomoro probe in 1993. Relatively quiet since the 1960's, except for the occasional visitor such as a flyby of the Jupiter-bound Galileo, the orbital invasion began again in earnest in the 1990's with Hiten-Hagomoro, as well as Clementine, Lunar Prospector and the ESA's SMART-1. more...

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Is Peter Diamandis the real-life Harriman?

Thanks to Google, there's now a $25-30 million X-prize available to the team that lands a privately-funded rover on the moon by the end of 2012, takes some pictures, and moves at least 500 meters on the lunar surface. Details here. And here. And here. And here.

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When we last took a look at Mars, things looked bad for the Mars Rovers. A global dust storm threatened their power-generating capabilities. Was this the end of Spirit and Opportunity? more...

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