NASA’s senior Mars rover, Opportunity, has just passed the shortest-daylight weeks of the long Martian year with its solar panels in encouragingly clean condition for entering a potential dust-storm season in 2018. Before dust season will come the 14th Earth-year anniversaries of Mars landings by the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity in January 2004. Their missions were…

NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, which has been in service at Mars since October 2001, put itself into safe mode—a protective standby status—on Dec. 26, while remaining in communication with Earth. The Odyssey project team has diagnosed the cause—an uncertainty aboard the spacecraft about its orientation with regard to Earth and the sun—and is restoring the…