It's just one year to go before the launch of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) - the next spacecraft from Earth to head for the Red Planet. Due for launch on August 10, 2005, the spacecraft will reach Mars 7 months later, and mapping the planet with the most powerful instruments ever sent to Mars; its camera will be so sensitive, it will be able to see objects as small as a metre (3 feet) across. The team building the spacecraft - 175 at Lockheed Martin and 110 and NASA's JPL - has completed integration and testing of most of the MRO's components, and nearly completed its software.

An unmanned cargo ship blasted off from Kazakhstan today, en route to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. Progress 15 lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 0503 UTC (1:03 am EDT), and safely reached orbit 10 minutes later. It's carrying propellant, air, water, spare parts, life support components and equipment hardware. One special delivery is a set of new pumps for the US spacesuits on board the station that experienced cooling problems earlier this year. The crew used Russian-built spacesuits to make their latest spacewalks.

Here's a perspective view of the caldera at the top of Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the Solar System. The image was taken with Mars Express' High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), which allows scientists to assemble a 3D view of any surface feature on Mars. Olympus Mons is 22 km (14 miles) high, and the caldera drops down 3 km (1.9 miles). The circular regions inside the caldera are where the lava was emerging at different points in the volcano's history.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope took this image of a dying star in the middle of a doughnut of leftover gas and dust. The dying star is is part of a planetary nebula, called NGC 246, which used to be similar to our own Sun, but it expended all its fuel and then boiled off its outer layers. Spitzer "sees" in the infrared spectrum, which allows it to peer through most of the obscuring material and get a much better look at the star and its surroundings. NGC 246 is located 1,800 light-years away in the Cetus constellation of our galaxy.

Another X Prize contender's rocket crashed over the weekend. Armadillo Aerospace's lead engineer and funder John Carmack reported that their prototype rocket ran out of fuel on a test flight and crashed shortly after takeoff. The $35,000 hydrogen peroxide-powered "Black Armadillo" lifted off from the launch pad and then ran out of fuel 180 metres (590 feet) into the air; it crashed into the ground and was completely destroyed. The team hopes to be flying again in September with a completely new vehicle.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express has relayed images from the NASA Mars rovers for the first time, demonstrating how the robots at Mars can work with each other to keep the data flowing back to Earth. Mars Express flew over the Opportunity rover on August 4, and received 15 images which were stored in the rover's memory. The data was transferred to the ESA's operations centre in Germany, and then passed along to NASA's JPL in Pasadena. This communication was possible because the rovers and Mars Express use the same communication protocols.

This image of Saturn's moon Rhea was taken as Cassini was looping away after it went into its initial orbit around the Ringed Planet. The image was taken on July 15, in visible light when Cassini was 5.1 million km (3.2 million miles) away from Rhea, and shows its heavily cratered surface and a bright feature near the terminator.

The Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science has succeeded in launching and deploying the first ever solar sail into space. A solar sail is a thin metallic film pushed by light from the Sun - like a sail on Earth is pushed by the wind - it requires no engine. The 7.5 micrometers thick sail was carried on board an S-310 rocket launched from the Uchinoura Space Center, and deployed at 122 km (75 miles) altitude.

NASA announced on Friday that one of Hubble's four science instruments has failed, and they're not sure if they can get it working again. The instrument is called the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), and it's designed to detect black holes and measure the temperature of stars. Engineers think that its backup power converter has failed; unfortunately, it already lost its primary power converter almost three years ago. The STIS was installed during a servicing mission in 1997, and it's already exceeded its planned lifespan of 5 years.

NASA is working on a human-like robot called "Robonaut" to assist astronauts with the maintenance of the International Space Station. It's still a long way off before the robot joins the astronauts in space, but things are developing well. This week the robot got a "space leg" so that it can move itself around a simulated version of the station. Another test put it onto a modified Segway scooter so that it could wheel around the lab. The robot is controlled through "telepresence", where commands from a human controller are transmitted to the robot wirelessly.

The European Space Agency's Envisat Earth observation satellite is so sensitive it can track changes on the surface of our planet that move at the pace your fingernails grow. One of Envisat's tasks as it orbits the Earth every 100 minutes is to make a precise map of the seismic areas that make up 15% of the planet's surface. At the end of its five year mission, the spacecraft will have provided details about how these seismic areas have changed over time. By comparing these changes to the locations of earthquakes around the world, scientists should get an insight into regions that could be due for a shakeup.

This detailed picture of Saturn's stormy atmosphere was taken on July 13 by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, when it was 5.1 million km (3.2 million miles) away from the planet. It was taken using Cassini's narrow angle camera using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light.

Astronomers used to believe that dwarf irregular galaxies were leftover building blocks from the beginning of the Universe which somehow avoided getting gobbled up by larger galaxies. New observations using the Subaru Telescope of dwarf galaxy Leo A has challenged this theory, however, as it's clearly been through a lot in its history. Astronomers found that size and structure of Leo A is significantly more complex than previously observed, and it shares many aspects of larger, more complex galaxies like our own Milky Way - it probably went through similar mergings and galactic collisions.

The annual Perseid meteor shower has already started, but it's going to peak on the night of August 11, with observers in dark locations seeing upwards of 60 meteors an hour. This year could be special, though, since the Earth is expected to pass through a brand new filament of material left over from Comet Swift-Tuttle when it flew past in 1862. This year's Perseids could turn into a full fledged meteor storm, but the only way to know for sure is to get out and watch. The best time will be after 11 pm, in the darkest skies you can find.

NASA and JAXA have decided to extend the operations of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) until the end of 2004 so it can provide data during the Autumn storm season for the U.S. and Asia. Officials had originally planned to have the spacecraft cease observations in July, and then perform a safe de-orbit maneuver about a year later. TRMM measures rainfall levels over the global tropics, allowing scientists to study the transfer of water and energy from the oceans into the atmosphere and back again. Its radar can see through clouds providing detailed images of the insides of hurricanes and storms.

Cassini took this image of Saturn - its new home - as it traveled away from the Ringed Planet after its arrival in orbit. Separate images were taken with its red, blue and green filters on July 17, and then merged to create a natural colour view. Cassini was 5.8 million km (3.6 million miles) away at the time.

In orbit around Saturn for more than a month now, the Cassini spacecraft has been sending back mountains of scientific data. It's now detected flashes of lightning, a new radiation belt, and a glow around Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The spacecraft's radio and plasma wave science instrument is detecting the lighting, which varies from day to day; a dramatically different situation from what the Voyagers found 20 years ago. The new radiation belt is just above Saturn's cloud tops and extends around the planet, yet the radiation particles are able to "jump over" the planet's rings.

A Russian Proton rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday, carrying a Brazilian Amazonas satellite into orbit. The rocket launched at 2232 UTC (6:32 pm EDT), and its Breeze M upper stage placed the satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit 9 hours, 11 minutes later. When it reaches its final position of 61-degrees West, it will provide broadcast television services to countries on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.