[Tuesday, January 3, 2006] Shortly before its Spirit's anniversary, the Mars Global Surveyor team acquired an image covering approximately 3 km by 3 km (1.9 mi by 1.9 mi) centered on the rover's current location in the Columbia Hills.

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[Tuesday, January 3, 2006] Spirit is healthy. The rover drove 8.3 meters (27 feet) and perfectly positioned itself in front of a rock informally named "Comanche." Spirit performed work with the instruments on the robotic arm on a target called "Horseback" at Comanche.

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[Thursday, January 5, 2006] Spirit is in excellent health after a busy holiday weekend. The rover team made several three-sol plans in single working days so that while the rover was busy, the crew could take the holidays off (though with a few late nights on the work days).

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[Sunday, January 8, 2006] This week Spirit completed robotic-arm work on "El Dorado." The rover team has kept Opportunity productive while engineers continue to evaluate the best posture for carrying the robotic arm when the rover resumes driving.

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[Sunday, January 8, 2006] The uppermost part of the rock, just above the center of the image and in the enlargement at top, shows distinctive centimeter-sized, smile-shaped features that sedimentary geologists call "festoons."

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[Tuesday, January 10, 2006] On or about January 5, 2006, the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) is releasing for community review and comment a "DRAFT" Announcement of Opportunity (AO) titled Mars Scout and Mission of Opportunity.

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[Sunday, January 15, 2006] The purpose of this report is to provide comments on the draft Mars Program Plan for the next decade. Specifically, comments are provided on the version of the plan presented during the MEPAG Meeting on November 3, 2005.

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[Thursday, January 19, 2006] "At Meridiani, the main source of excitement continues to be the festoons. The low-light imaging we've been doing is great for bringing this stuff out, and we've come to realize that it's present in a whole lot of the rocks around us."

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[Thursday, January 19, 2006] Spirit is healthy and is driving as efficiently as possible toward "Home Plate." On the way to Home Plate, Spirit stopped to look at "Arad," where scientists encountered a cluster of white, powdery soil.

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[Thursday, January 19, 2006] "You are invited to participate in the First Landing Site Workshop for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover mission to Mars. The workshop will be held May 31 through June 2, 2006, in Pasadena, California."

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[Sunday, January 22, 2006] The World Premiere of "Roving Mars" will take place Jan. 26, 2006, at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

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[Sunday, January 22, 2006] The spectacular features visible today on the surface of the Red Planet indicate the past existence of Martian glaciers, but where did the ice come from?

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[Tuesday, January 24, 2006] Two years ago, the Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, landed on Meridiani Planum. The rover marked its first Mars-year (687 Earth Days) anniversary in December 2005.

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[Tuesday, January 24, 2006] NASA will host thousands of local students to learn about the latest from Mars as part of the 2006 JASON Expedition, "Mysteries of Earth and Mars."

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[Tuesday, January 24, 2006] Spirit and Opportunity have been working overtime to help scientists better understand ancient environmental conditions on the red planet.

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[Thursday, January 26, 2006] A bold, new robotic mission to Mars proposes to make the first exploration of subsurface water ice in a potentially habitable zone.

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[Saturday, January 28, 2006] Spirit spent the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend analyzing a remarkable exposure of bright, loose material. Spirit discovered the material while driving toward "Home Plate" along the floor of the basin south of "Husband Hill" in Gusev Crater.

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[Saturday, January 28, 2006] This panoramic camera (Pancam) image shows a group of boulders informally named "FuYi." These basaltic rocks were formed by volcanic processes and may be a primary constituent of Lorre Ridge and other interesting landforms in the basin.

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[Saturday, January 28, 2006] Spirit continues to pursue the short-term goal of driving to "Home Plate." Results from scientific instruments on the rover's robotic arm indicate that the white soil target called "Arad" has a salty chemistry dominated by iron-bearing sulfates.

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[Sunday, January 29, 2006] The following image from Spirit's microscopic imager was posted on 28 January 2006.

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[Sunday, January 29, 2006] The following image from Spirit's microscopic imager was posted on 28 January 2006.

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[Sunday, January 29, 2006] This mosaic of navigation-camera frames from Opportunity, presented in a vertical projection, shows the rover's position after it dug itself to wheel-hub depth in a small dune during its 446th martian day, or sol (April 26, 2005).

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[Sunday, January 29, 2006] Spirit continues to make progress toward "Home Plate," a circular feature scientists hope to investigate before the Martian winter, in search of layered rock outcrops that may provide additional information about the geology of the "Columbia Hills."

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[Sunday, January 29, 2006] Opportunity remains healthy following another busy week. The main activity of the week was taking microscopic images of a feature nicknamed "Lower Overgaard."

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[Monday, January 30, 2006] "On one cold dark Sunday afternoon not long after the dedication, a mother and her young son came to the astronaut's graves. Her identity is unknown to the authors of this book - but her actions were witnessed by one of us."

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[Tuesday, January 31, 2006] In the frame of a contract signed with the European Space Agency (ESA), Alcatel Alenia Space has started the ExoMars mission design. The ExoMars mission aims at sending a lander rover to Mars in order to find traces of past or present life.

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[Tuesday, January 31, 2006] If a future space mission to Mars brings rocks back to Earth the techniques used could enable scientists to look at microscopic fossils inside the rocks to search for signs of life, such as organic cell walls.

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