Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reports quite a bit of local dust and water ice cloud activity across the planet in the most recent MARCI weather report, but still clear skies over both rovers. For their two-year mission extension (the mission's fourth extension), they proposed to work on "determining Mars habitability, assessing present Mars volatile inventories, monitoring surface changes (particularly those involving water), and monitoring present atmosphere and polar processes."

MAVEN completed its sixth deep-dip campaign on August 4. August 8 marked its one-Mars-year anniversary in orbit. MAVEN's extended mission will take it through two more Earth years -- another Mars year -- and will include many more deep-dip campaigns as well as lots of cooperative science with other Mars missions. For further reading, you might enjoy this blog entry by team member Rob Lillis, describing why it's hard to figure out Mars' atmospheric loss.

It's now Opportunity sol 4480. The rover spent a few weeks studying some interesting grooves in the valley slope but has wrapped up work there. Now it is making its way south, below (to the east of) the Marathon Valley outcrops it has been studying for most of a year. Power has deteriorated a bit, down to 682 watt-hours in the most recent update, due to more dust in the atmosphere. We're not at dust storm season yet so hopefully it will pass.

On the other side of Mars, Curiosity has made it most of the way south through the Murray buttes. According to the most recent Astrogeology blog, they will be stopping to drill again soon. Don't miss Seán Doran's awesome visualizations of the Murray buttes with astronaut figures dropped in for scale! After drilling and exiting the buttes, Curiosity will drive another kilometer south to cross an interdune region of bedrock, then there is another kilometer-plus of dune-threading before it will arrive at the next change in bedrock type. It looks like they plan to drill fairly regularly along the way.

A few articles on Mars Orbiter Mission appeared in Indian news media last month. Mars Orbiter Mission will see its second anniversary in Mars orbit on September 24, and all five instruments seem to still be functioning. A respectable total of 30 kilograms of fuel remains aboard, according to an article in the Indian Express. The same article says they are now planning to cope with an anticipated 7- to 8-hour eclipse in January, something that the spacecraft can't tolerate well because it has insufficient battery power. They plan to do a trajectory correction maneuver that will shorten the duration of the eclipse.

Beyond Mars

Only one month remains for the Rosetta mission; the spacecraft has begun spiraling its orbit lower and lower. The most recent elliptical orbit dived to within 4.4 kilometers of the surface! They released an awesome animation (below) of an outburst from the comet recorded in February, along with a lengthy science story describing all the different instruments' perspectives on the outburst. It was lucky that all the instruments happened to be on at the time -- but you make that kind of luck by having a mission that lasts as long as Rosetta has. It's going to be very sad to see this mission end. Check here for the latest NavCam image releases and here for the OSIRIS image of the day, and watch this site to see Rosetta's current position with respect to the comet. I plan to attend the end-of-mission event at the European Space Operations Centre at the end of this month, and pay my respects to this great mission.