Spirit Summits Bonneville Crater
Surpassing its mission success criterion for driving on Mars, the Spirit rover is well into its second month on the surface and has logged its first 1000 feet on the odometer. Today, the first images looking down into its near-term destination, the Bonneville crater, delighted mission scientists anxious to view the crater ejecta and any layered rock histories.

Flying Above Mount Olympus
The European Mars Express orbiter captured the highest resolution images yet of the largest volcano in our solar system, named Olympus Mons. In addition to the need for water in any biological scenarios, geothermal heat may also have had a role in the planet's past.

Opportunity Puts Hematite on Hold
Scientists have produced a map showing the concentration of hematite in a small area of the crater where Opportunity landed. There's plenty of hematite around, but figuring out how it got there may have to wait. First, Opportunity is going to study a nearby bedrock outcrop - and it doesn't contain any hematite at all.

Scientists Home in on Opportunity's Location
Using images taken by Opportunity during its descent to the martian surface, mission scientists have begun to pinpoint the rover's location. Nearby, a large crater beckons as a long-range scientific target.

3-D Martian Grand Canyon
The first high-resolution, stereoscopic image from the European orbiter, Mars Express, shows the Grand Canyon of Mars in relief and highlights the erosion that must have moved tons of rocks and soil in the distant past.

Mars Express: Takeout Service
The swarm of ongoing Mars missions offers scientists a chance to combine wits, either using different instruments or unusual perspectives. An experiment dreamed up in a Paris cafe less than a year ago will unfold on Friday, when the European Mars Express orbiter looks down on the Spirit rover, while the rover looks up. The combined optics will allow scientists to see the horizon in infrared without dust and atmospheric distortions.

Journey (Not the Destination)
New panoramas released with identifying tie-points now show martian hills that are 2 to 3 kilometers away. The landforms expected after such a drive into the distance likely differ from those found in the crater floor, a prospect that gives mission scientist an urge to go prospecting.

Location Is Everything
To tie down Spirit's location, three mission teams have agreed to within a quarter-mile. But before driving their rover around, the teams want to agree precisely on terrain and features in an otherwise flat landscape.

A Traveler's Guide To Mars
Arizona planetary scientist, Dr. Bill Hartmann, offers a visual grand tour of Mars, in anticipation of the trio of landers scheduled in the next few weeks.

Mars: What Hubble Sees
If your views of Mars were somehow obscured by clouds or city lights, what the Hubble Space Telescope saw on the martian opposition provides a map and guide for conducting a grand tour of the red planet.