Having ended its survey of Victoria Crater in 2008, the doughty Mars explorer, Opportunity, has been carefully making its way toward the much larger Endeavour Crater.

Check out the image above, recently returned by the rover and annotated by humans.

A much larger picture can be found at JPL's photojournal. And for a the complete vicarious experience, follow Scott Maxwell on Twitter @marsroverdriver.

Wayne

While what, if any, payload may have returned with Hayabusa remains unknown, the - ahem - fallout from the spectacular return of the robotic lander and its cargo continues. Check out this story from the Discover blog, 80 Beats, "Best Science Teacher Ever Tricks Students into Joining NASA Mission."

Key graph:

Ron Dantowitz of Brookline, Massachusetts, gave the three a challenge: If you had to track an object entering the atmosphere at 27,000 miles per hour, how would you know where to look, how would you keep the camera trained on the careening object, and what could you learn about the temperatures the object encountered? After they worked on the project for half a year, Dantowitz let loose his secret—this was no hypothetical scenario. He and the three students got to fly on the DC-8 over Australia and help NASA film Hayabusa’s return.

Like the participation of amateurs in GalaxyZoo and MoonZoo, real space science and real exploration are more accessible than in any time in history to future astroengineers and space application developers. And with its continued developent of capital and human infrastructure based around this new reality, Kentucky Space is leading the way.

Wayne

Image credit: ISAS / JAXA. NASA / JPL / Art by Corby Waste

Posted at NASA's photojournal, this picture is a reminder that technologies created for space - from microcontrollers, which were created during Apollo, to filtering technologies related to human health - have great utility on Earth.

One researcher from NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., is seen at the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii collecting data from a Chemical and Mineralogy instrument closely related to the one that will fly aboard the Mars Exploration Rover in late 2011.

At the site, a stand-in for Mars, he is testing technology for producing water and oxygen from soil.

Wayne

Shock testing for KySat-1 will take place on July 7 at CalPoly.

Another in a series of pre-flight exams, shock tests use controlled explosions to simulate in-flight events that might affect the integrity of the CubeSat, such as motor start and stop on the launch vehicle, and the explosive bolts that separate rocket stages.

Following the shock tests, the CubeSat will return to Kentucky for its final functionality tests before delivery around mid-July for a planned November flight as a payload on the NASA Glory mission.

KySat-1 recently passed its vibration tests.

Wayne