[Friday, December 2, 2005] NASA's Centennial Challenges program office, in collaboration with the California Space Education and Workforce Institute, Santa Maria, Calif., announced the Planetary Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Challenge.

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[Friday, December 2, 2005] "On behalf of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) Executive Committee I hereby summarize key results from the MEPAG meeting held in Arcadia, California, from Nov 2 to 3, 2005."

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[Monday, December 5, 2005] NASA's twin Mars rovers have successfully explored the surface of the mysterious red planet for a full Martian year. The rovers' original mission was scheduled for only three months.

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[Sunday, December 11, 2005] "Ambitious space projects such as a mission to Mars often provoke criticisms from skeptics - is it really worth spending billions of dollars?"

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[Sunday, December 11, 2005] Opportunity is currently parked at "Erebus Crater," where it has continued remote-sensing science while the team made progress in diagnosing why a motor in the robotic arm stalled on sol 654.

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[Monday, December 12, 2005] If coming to rest inside Eagle Crater was a giant stroke of luck, chance played no role at all in the choice of Meridiani Planum as a landing site. NASA picked Meridiani on the strength of data from two instruments on the Mars Odyssey orbiter.

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[Monday, December 12, 2005] Auroras similar to Earth's Northern Lights appear to be common on Mars, according to physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, who have analyzed six years' worth of data from the Mars Global Surveyor.

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[Tuesday, December 13, 2005] ESA announced today support of the development of an instrument for testing deep soil samples on Mars in a European mission called ExoMars. A researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara will direct the development of the instrument.

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[Wednesday, December 14, 2005] This week Spirit drove to an outcrop area informally named "Algonquin." On sol 685, Spirit successfully drove for 15 meters (49 feet) and prepared for a series of robotic-arm activities planned for sol 687 to 690 at Algonquin.

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[Wednesday, December 14, 2005] A University of California, Berkeley, study of methane-producing bacteria frozen at the bottom of Greenland's two-mile thick ice sheet could help guide scientists searching for similar bacterial life on Mars.

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[Monday, December 19, 2005] "Today, we are at the cusp of a new age of exploration, one that will take robotic pathfinders and pioneering astronauts to the Moon, Mars and beyond."

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[Wednesday, December 21, 2005] A region of Mars that some planetary scientists believe was once a shallow lakebed and likely habitable for life may not have been so wet after all, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.

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[Wednesday, December 21, 2005] During their one year stay at the Concordia Station the Italian-French crew will participate in a number of ESA experiments – the outcome of which will help prepare for long-term missions to Mars.

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[Wednesday, December 21, 2005] The news that Beagle 2 may have been spotted on the surface of Mars in the immediate vicinity of where it was expected to land was welcomed by the European Space Agency.

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[Thursday, December 22, 2005] Geologic features at the Opportunity landing site on Mars were formed not by a lake that evaporated but by constant strikes from meteorites, say two Arizona State University geologists.

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[Thursday, December 22, 2005] "To determine the best exploration architecture and strategy to implement these many changes, the Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) team was established at NASA Headquarters (HQ) as discussed below."

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[Thursday, December 22, 2005] "One of the key requirements to enable a successful human space exploration program is the development and implementation of a vehicle capable of transporting and housing crew on LEO, lunar, and Mars missions. "

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[Tuesday, December 27, 2005] In January 2004, President George W. Bush announced a new Vision for Space Exploration for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that would return humans to the Moon by 2020 in preparation for human exploration of Mars.

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[Wednesday, December 28, 2005] Imaging stars while a Mars-bound spacecraft is in its cruise phase provides a good way to verify that a camera is in good focus, following the rigors of the launch from Florida.

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[Wednesday, December 28, 2005] "Over at Meridiani, we have now gotten pretty good at operating our balky arm without problems. And we've been at Olympia long enough now that it's probably now the best-imaged place on the entire planet."

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[Friday, December 30, 2005] Note: Recently we posted a final draft of this report. We have now have the final version. In order to present the most accurate version of this report, we have removed the draft version and replaced it with the final version.

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