[Monday, December 4, 2006] Opportunity is healthy and is driving to the promontory called "Cape St.Mary." From that vantage point, Opportunity will photograph the sedimentary layers in the northeast-facing cliff of "Cape Verde".

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[Monday, December 4, 2006] According to an item first posted by Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine: "NASA is ready to announce major new findings about the presence of water currently emerging onto the surface of Mars.

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[Monday, December 4, 2006] New images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show three additional NASA spacecraft that have landed on Mars: the Spirit rover active on the surface since January 2004 and the two Viking landers that successfully reached the surface in 1976.

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[Monday, December 4, 2006] NASA hosts a news briefing at 1 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Dec. 6, to present new science results from the Mars Global Surveyor. The briefing will take place in the NASA Headquarters auditorium.

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[Wednesday, December 6, 2006] NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years.

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[Monday, December 11, 2006] On Sol 1016, Opportunity arrived at Bottomless Bay and began making science observations. Opportunity also performed step one of a series of checkouts of its new capability for more autonomous assessment of where it is safe to place its robotic arm.

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[Tuesday, December 12, 2006] Here we propose that the radioresistance (tolerance to ionizing radiation) observed in several terrestrial bacteria has a martian origin.

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[Tuesday, December 12, 2006] Low-pressured environments may be used to reduce the equivalent system mass of near-term plant biology experiments on landers or future bioregenerative advanced life support systems.

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[Tuesday, December 12, 2006] The Mars Organic Analyzer (MOA), a portable microfabricated capillary electrophoresis instrument being developed for planetary exploration, is used to analyze a wide variety of fluorescamine-labeled amine-containing biomarker compounds.

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[Tuesday, December 12, 2006] The discovery of methane in the martian atmosphere is one of the most important discoveries in the field of astrobiology. One possible source of this methane could be a microorganism analogous to those on Earth in the domain Archaea known as methanogens.

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[Tuesday, December 12, 2006] The Mars Organic Analyzer (MOA) can detect a much broader spectrum of organic compounds than was previously possible, and these could serve as key biomarkers of extinct or existing life on Mars.

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[Thursday, December 14, 2006] Observations by MARSIS, the first sub-surface sounding radar used to explore a planet, strongly suggest that ancient impact craters lie buried beneath the smooth, low plains of the northern hemisphere of Mars. The technique uses echoes of radio waves that

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[Thursday, December 14, 2006] Some of the first radar and imaging results from NASA's newest Mars spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, show details in layers of ice-rich deposits near the poles.

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[Sunday, December 17, 2006] "You're an astrobiologist standing in the centre of a vast, empty expanse of rock and dust pockmarked with impact craters. There's no water here, no life, but your task is to collect data important for the study of life in the Universe."

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[Sunday, December 17, 2006] NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The THEMIS was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in cooporation with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing.

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[Wednesday, December 20, 2006] On 8 and 9 January, ESA and BNSC are to hold a workshop to define European long-term strategy for space exploration and set the scene for the decisions to be taken at the ESA Council meeting at ministerial level scheduled for 2008.

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[Friday, December 22, 2006] Overall Mission, Payload, and Science Planning Status Since the last status report, the Mars Express spacecraft, subsystems and payload continued functioning well after more than 3 years in space.

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[Friday, December 22, 2006] NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has a new project manager. Jim Erickson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., had been deputy project manager for the orbiter since early 2006.

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[Wednesday, December 27, 2006] NASA is providing a unique opportunity to the public to suggest photo targets for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the spacecraft that recently took a history-making image of the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on the rim of Victoria Crater.

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[Wednesday, December 27, 2006] After Spirit drove on sol 1041 (Dec. 7, 2006), NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter went into safe mode before the rover's could relay data to Earth about results of the drive.

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[Wednesday, December 27, 2006] Opportunity is healthy and driving toward "Bottomless Bay" to gather data on whether this would be a suitable future entry point into "Victoria Crater." The rover will continue traversing the crater rim and collecting images of the cliff walls.

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[Wednesday, December 27, 2006] Spirit is healthy and conducting scientific analysis of a rock target known as "Palma." During the past week, Spirit tested some new software sequences, including a "watch for dust devil" command and an automatic placement command.

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[Wednesday, December 27, 2006] Opportunity is traversing the crater rim near an alcove known as "Bottomless Bay," assessing whether it might eventually serve as an entry point, and collecting images of the crater's interior cliffs.

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[Thursday, December 28, 2006] The unexpected longevity of Spirit and Opportunity is giving the space agency a chance to field-test on Mars some new capabilities useful both to these missions and future rovers.

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[Friday, December 29, 2006] Last December a second Italian-French crew took up residence in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. They will stay there for over a year. The aim: to help the European Space Agency (ESA) with preparations for a human mission to Mars.

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[Friday, December 29, 2006] NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has a new project manager. Jim Erickson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., had been deputy project manager for the orbiter since early 2006.

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