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BACK AGAIN: Here’s a couple of things I missed:

Two new essays from John Carter McKnight, Small Steps and Marching on the Undiscovered Country. (Note that the formatting is a bit messed up on both of these essays — his website still seems to be having some technical problems.)

Updates on Mars Express and TransOrbital.

A contrarian look from Reuters at the “Mars was once warm and wet” scenario (with a slightly different version from AP).

Just days after Orbital Recovery offers to rescue it, the Euros scuttle the Astra 1K satellite. Sure, it would have cost money to monitor and control the thing while Orbital Recovery got up to speed, but there’s a chance that the cost of delay, monitoring, and recovery would have been lower than the cost of dumping and replacing the thing altogether — along with the now-lost opportunity of demonstrating a new capability for the industry.

Uiniversity of Colorado scientists believe life was unlikely to have developed on Mars (note how the asteroid impact heating theory appears to be taking root).

NASA, along with the Planetary Society and LEGO, is running a “Name the Rover” contest for the upcoming MER missions.