This is my first post in a long time. When I last wrote, the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory mission seemed like an eternity away. But now we’re getting closer and the spark of excitement is about to reignite.

Check out this impressive 11-minute animation, just released, depicting key events of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, which will launch in late 2011 and land a rover, Curiosity, on Mars in August 2012.

New findings of ice under Martian soil at suggest the Viking Lander 2, digging into mid-latitude Mars in 1976, might have struck ice if it had dug 10 centimeters (4 inches) deeper.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed frozen water hiding just below the surface of mid-latitude Mars. The spacecraft’s observations were obtained from orbit after meteorites excavated fresh craters on the Red Planet.

Scientists controlling instruments on the orbiter found bright ice exposed at five Martian sites with new craters that range in depth from approximately half a meter to 2.5 meters (1.5 feet to 8 feet). The craters did not exist in earlier images of the same sites. Some of the craters show a thin layer of bright ice atop darker underlying material. The bright patches darkened in the weeks following initial observations, as the freshly exposed ice vaporized into the thin Martian atmosphere. One of the new craters had a bright patch of material large enough for one of the orbiter’s instruments to confirm it is water-ice.

The finds indicate water-ice occurs beneath Mars’ surface halfway between the north pole and the equator, a lower latitude than expected in the Martian climate.

“This ice is a relic of a more humid climate from perhaps just several thousand years ago,” said Shane Byrne of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Read the full press release –>

I’m actually surprised there hasn’t been more buzz surrounding this. Google Earth released version 5.0 of its software a couple of weeks ago, allowing users to now navigate the Earth’s oceans. But it also added a 3D version of Mars which you can navigate.

In January, JPL will celebrate the fifth anniversary of Spirit and Opportunity landing on Mars, and the twin rovers will continue with their newest adventures.

At Serious Play 2008, Charles Elachi shares stories from NASA’s legendary Jet Propulsion Lab — including tales and video from the Mars Rover project.

Charles Elachi is the director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he oversees space exploration programs such as the Mars Rovers.

As the Phoenix Lander mission on Mars draws to a close, I thought it would be fitting to shine light on NASA’s next ambitious journey to the planet: Mars Science Laboratory. The exact launch date has not yet been set, but it will likely be in September or October 2009.

Mars Science Laboratory fact sheet (pdf)

It has been nearly four years since the joint European Space Agency / NASA mission to Saturn and its moons delivered a probe to Titan. Here is an intriguing video made with actual footage from the probe’s decent onto this distant moon.

Over the past few months, NASA’s robotic arm has been making a bit of a mess. This image, taken by the Surface Stereo Imager (SSI) of NASA’s Phoenix Lander, shows Martian soil piled on top of the spacecraft’s deck and some of its instruments. Visible in the upper-left portion of the image are several wet chemistry cells of the lander’s Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA). The instrument on the lower right of the image is the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer. The excess sample delivered to the MECA’s sample stage can be seen on the deck in the lower left portion of the image.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute