I've been enjoying basking in the glow of the Red Planet the nights, as well as seeing all the great images that keep pouring in! I'm also pondering what sort of observations may be in the works for the possible asteroid impact headed for Mars. Although recent updates put the odds back down to 1 in 28.

Looking at the Mars Rover updates it seems that both of them are doing fine. It's getting into early autumn for them so they'll be busy trying to get as much science in before they need to rest up during the winter. Along with its geology duties, Spirit took out some time to send us another great panorama. You can really see the dust buildup no the solar panels!

Mars Odyssey has been busy looking for sites to land the next rovers, the Mars Science Laboratory. The selection is down to 36 semi-finalists. Five finalists will eventually be chosen, but until then, check out the Themis observations of these sites. Some of them are even in and around Valles Marinaris, the Grand Canyon of Mars!

Life does get interesting! I take a week off to visit family over Christmas and come back to an e-mail message from MarsWatcher Jay Albert asking me if I'll be posting updates on this asteroid that might hit Mars next month. Well, before I can do any updates, I figure I'd better bring myself up to speed on this event.

So, the asteroid in questions is one 2007 WD5, a member of the Earth-orbit crossing Apollo asteroids and it was only discovered this year on 30 November. The current best values for its orbital elements can be found at the NASA Near-Earth Asteroid site. Here's some of the highlights from their table:

You can see an up-to-date view of its orbit, relative to the orbits of Earth and Mars at the JPL Small-Body Database Browser site. Keep going back to see it update!

According to the NASA Press Release from 21 December, there is a 1-in-75 chance that the asteroid will collide with Mars. The odds are based on the various uncertainties in the orbit of the asteroid due to the fact that it hasn't been known all that long.

They say that if it collides, it'll leave a nice crater as it hits with the energy of about 3 megatons of TNT.

So today is the day we are closest to Mars—due to the severe ellipticity of Mars' orbit, this does not coincide with opposition (it would if both both Earth and Mars has circular orbits). As I write this, the actual time of closest approach is a little over an hour away (23:45 UT). I can hardly wait to see all the great images! The HST folks have already posted their contribution to the cause. It's a great image!

NASA also recently released an image from Spirit showing some unusually white material. This was part of the MER overview given by Steve Squyres at the 39th Annual Division for Planetary Sciences meeting. He said that this stuff looks to be very rich in pure silica and there are really only two ways to make have this much here. The first is to have it dissolved into solution by a hot spring, then being deposited when the water goes away. The second is to have an acidic steam fumerole dissolve away everything but the silica. Either way, it's very interesting as we know that both such places here on Earth are usually teeming with life! This would be a great place to go to search for evidence of past life.

Here's wishing everyone a happy winter-solstice-based holiday and clear skies from now through opposition on the 24th!

In the hustle and bustle of classes I seem to have let the entire month of November slip by without a post. Now that we're into the heart of the Mars opposition season I'll have pick up the pace.

Last week NASA put out a press release showing some images of Phobos and Deimos as seen by the CRISM instrument on board Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Deimos, the smaller and farther-from-Mars of the two, was imaged this past June while Phobos was imaged in October.

The press release discusses some differences of the two moons, and how they resemble asteroids made up of some of the most primitive stuff in the inner solar-system.

Some of the initial studies of these data were presented at the FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE EXPLORATION OF PHOBOS AND DEIMOS by Scott Murchie and coauthors. Their preliminary results so far tend to corroborate what has already been known—that they tend reflect more red and near-infrared light than blue (although, to the eye, they would appear mostly dark and gray), they they do not show any tell-tail signs of water or any of the dark, dense, minerals found in standard basalts (rocks similar to the dark areas of the moon and much of the bedrock of Mars itself).

The geometry of the images will ultimately allow the team to study the differences in the less-red portion of Stickney crater on Phobos; the material is most likely impact ejecta which could be more, or less, primitive than the rest of the moon.

I'll keep my eyes open for more of this work and report on it here as soon as I see it.

All last week I was at the Division for Planetary Science conference; I thought about blogging in semi-real time from there as sessions were going on, but decided I could better pass along what's going on in Mars research if I just took notes and then wrote it up more clearly later. I'll do that later this week.

Last Sunday, just after getting back, I had to drive my wife to the airport at 4:30 am and as we walked outside, we looked up and saw Mars nice and bright in Gemini. I'm sad to say, it was my first sighting... I'm going to have to pull out my new telescope and start looking at it more closely! I don't have a camera adapter so I won't be posting any images myself. I had hoped to get time on the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility this year, but that fell through, so no images from their this year either. But I am really enjoying everyone else's submissions!

So far we have about 265 submitted images, and the pace is picking up. Of course, this means that we are starting to get more members, and really putting the new system through its paces. There have only been a couple folks so far that have had issues with the system, and I thank them for their patience as we work out all the bugs. In general, I think this system is working far more smoothly than the old ftp submission system.

Clear skies!