What's up in the solar system in June 2011

Time again for my monthly look at what's going on with the robots exploring the solar system! It'll be a busy month for Cassini, with lots of cool icy moon observations: it'll spend several days looking at Iapetus, and will pass very close to Helene mid-month before doing some RADAR work on a Titan flyby. Opportunity just seems to get faster every month -- if she keeps up her pace, she'll be at the rim of Endeavour crater by the end of the summer. And Dawn is still getting closer to Vesta, though I have to say that my enthusiasm for its approach to this new world has cooled a bit since they haven't released any images since their first view of Vesta early last month.

Before I go into mission-by-mission detail, here's Olaf Frohn's marvelous map of where all of our explorers are on June 1. There are two major changes to this map since last month's: Spirit is now "grayed out," and it'll be the last time her name appears; and OSIRIS-REx has been added to the list of future launches.

email: info@als-alexander.org or interalex2@gmail.com