They are up and safe in orbit, no words on any mishaps either.
Oooopsies, premature - Spaceflightnow got one pic of something breaking off from the tank....

Yup.  Many years ago, I had a good laugh with him about it - I quoted it to him as a great 'short-short' SF story, unaware that he'd written it, and he had the delicious (to coin a phrase) experience of being able to say 'Well, actually, *I* wrote that!'.  I think it was Limburger, so the amount quoted in the story might have been a bit more than, er, delicious!  Sadly, he died in Glasgow ten years ago at the first SF WorldCon to be held here.  John Brunner was a giant of his time, but for some reason was barely published after the 1970s, despite being a thoroughly modern author. He was also, in the early 1970s 'Shockwave Rider', the first person to popularise the concept of computer worms.

I hope this gets approved!

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/05071...yby_future.html

In any case, the white paper on Io missions presented to the Decadal Survey -- which is pretty much the latest thinking on the subject -- can be found at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/io.pdf .

Because Messenger is usually too close to Earth to see it as more than a speck -- only during its close flybys of Earth will its camera be able to see Earth clearly.  (I believe there is only one more Earth flyby planned before it moves on to using repeated flybys first of Venus and then of Mercury itself to finally put itself into an orbit almost parallel to Mercury, thus allowing it to use an acceptably small amount of fuel to finally brake into orbit around Mercury itself.  The Europa Orbiter -- when they finally fly it -- will, after it enters orbit around Jupiter, use repeated flybys of Callisto, Ganymede, and finally Europa itself to match orbits in a similar way with Europa before braking into orbit around Europa.)

Great work... simple work, I guess, on an awesome image.

  My sense is, with this image we've found our lakes, with verification coming after we get an opportunity to scan these with RADAR and/or align them for specular glints. If the lakes are there long enough for such a flyover (at the start of the extended mission?) to take place.

  Titan's got long seasons. The observations so far are copacetic with this: The summer hemisphere sees sporadic methane clouds, most concentrated at the summer pole, and sometimes making a ring there. These clouds somehow lead to broader darkening of the overlying hazes. The clouds rain or mist down to the surface, wetting the summer pole and creating standing bodies of liquid and feeding seasonal systems that roughly flow equatorwards. That same pole may become dry during its autumn/winter.

  The most exciting possibility would be if there is a winter ice cap lurking in the dark, that melts to release massive global floods as the equinox approaches, flooding the equatorial dark areas, which currently seem to be dry or damp at best, but to have endured floods in the past. If there is a seasonal cycle, then a new temporary ocean is a few years away. But, it may also turn out to be much longer, even an eon, since those dark areas were actually wet.

  This image might well go down in history as a discovery/prediscovery image of great import.

From the DISR public website :

"Check out the Low Altitude Stereographic (.jpg)
and Low Altitude Gnomic (.png) projections. "

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/%7Ekholso/

But the ESA would still need
outside partners: "NASA will be asked to provide communcations links and
remote-sensing capabilities.  Russia could contribute engineering lander
design expertise and perhaps a radioisotope heater unit, under a framework
agreement inked earlier this year."

STS-114 launch delayed two months due to icing problems on fuel lines and other technical issues. Next launch window opens mid July.

Griffin also announced that preparatory work on a Hubble servicing mission will begin.

(source NASA Press conference, April 29)

For all of you worried about the cost of ExoMars here is some reassuring news.

ExoMars will not have an orbiter and will use NASA telecom infrastructure at Mars. The cost is estimated at $600 million for the rover.

Note also the formation of a NASA-ESA joint working group on the sample return mission.

Crumpler noted that there is a considerable age difference between the Columbia Hills and the lava plain that Spirit crossed to reach the Hills. He likened the Hills to a sandstone butte surrounded by fresh, young lava flows, similar to the landscape that is found in the United States’ Southwest. “The Hills are much, much older,” Crumpler said. “You can actually see the contact between the two where the lava flows sort of lapped up on the edges of the Hills. When you cross that boundary you go from the basalts which show only small amounts of weathering and alteration to the rocks on the Columbia Hills that are totally ‘grunged-up’ and altered, and basically water-soaked at some time in their history.”

Those missions are listed in approximate order of ESA's contribution and involvement. From instruments only on Sojourner and MER, through major subsystems such as Huygens, to complete spacecraft in the case of Ulysses, Giotto, Rosetta, SMART-1 and Mars Express/Beagle 2. In addition ESA has designed, built, managed and operated several observatories, such as XMM, INTEGRAL, Cluster and Hipparcos. Well before ExoMars is launched ESA will also have constructed and launched Venus Express, COROT, Herschel and Planck, all very complex spacecraft.

Even though it has been done three times already by NASA, putting a rover on Mars is a natural next step for ESA and well within European capabilities. Now if only Beagle 2 can be located perhaps ExoMars can repair it

I've been wondering what the focal lengths are for the two New Horizon cameras (Ralph and Lorri).  Curious to know how much Alan et al. were able to squeeze into their weight budget.

Yup, that's the key - the original datasets. Trying to enhance already poor existing images is kinda like trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Well, kinda, I'm sure something can be done with them to improve on them, but getting the original datasets is the proper way.

JPL, Ames, Goddard, LPL, et. al. isn't gonna do it. I was thinking of seeing some sort of relationship being set up where such legacy datasets might be passed on to expert amateurs or students working on a thesis, or some other sort of thing.

Just a hope.

No airbags on top ? What if a Yogi-ish kind of rock (or Burn Cliffs) appears and the whole probe tips over on impact ?

"We still want to get to the summit of Husband Hill and then head down into the 'Inner Basin' on the other side," Squyres said. "But now we have more flexibility in how we carry out the plan. Before, it was climb or die." Cresting the hill is now not as crucial for solar energy, but it still offers allures of potential exposures of rock layers not yet examined, plus a vista of surrounding terrain. In orbital images, the Inner Basin farther south appears to have terracing that hints of layered rock.

http://aviationnow.ecnext.com/free-scripts...rticle=04045p04

Here is the latest.  Looks bad.

A snip from this article
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c...MNGBNC2S9B1.DTL



Not that it is serious, but just a sign of wear and tear

well i won't respond to any of political stuff because it ends often in fights, i know that because i run my own big forum.


In my opinion Nasa and ESA etc.should work together to achieve our goals, the EU Member states should pay more money in the budget of ESA then Aurora could became true faster.
Remember ESA landed Huygens successful on Titan...
Remember Nasa lost 2 very important probes bound for Mars...

Even with experience you can fail and even without experience you can succeed.

Despite the financial status of ESA shoud we all not be happy that there is such a proposal? Shoud we not be all happy that so many missions are planned and not talking them down?