I wish there were better Martian news but events just don't cooperate. The Phoenix lander continues to scratch for any novel or notable discovery while its supporters put a good face anticipating results that tantalizingly fail to materialize. Perhaps, more accurately, that should read results that evaporate away! Yet another scoop of the sticky Martian soil was painstakingly scraped off the surface, only to stick in the scoop when brought to the TEGA oven that's supposed to bake its tiny payload into planetary science. At least the attempt didn't blow out the whole impulse deck as some had predicted in a possible but implausible nightmare. Despite having its mission extended Phoenix is working its little mechanical heart out to impress an overstimulated public, and not having much success as its Martian surroundings ineluctably grow colder and dimmer.

The moon, on the other hand, is heating up like a little oven of its own. I found it in the news twice this week. First, NASA selected twelve groups (eleven companies and one university) to develop ideas for their lunar return program called Constellation. For six months these groups will focus on a particular aspect of living and working on the lunar surface, covering topics from avionics to energy storage to habitat matters to moving the regolith around. As the basic blueprints for our long term stay their reports should make fascinating reading. (Then there's also the Google Lunar Xprize, kin to the Ansari X Prize awarded to SpaceShipOne for its Promethean achievement of reaching space using private financing. Even more ambitious, the Lunar Xprize places a challenge on private enterprise to accomplish a robotic moon landing which not only must land but also include a brief traverse on the surface. The challenge is being tackled by several teams from around the world and Godspeed to them all!)

In addition, this week eight countries that have never landed a citizen on the moon came one step closer by signing a "landmark agreement" with the United States regarding lunar exploration. The agreement, with signatories Britain, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, and South Korea, lays the foundation for a multinational robotic taskforce exploring the moon as never before. The communal effort will allow NASA to better manage the resources needed to secure humanity's return to our one large natural satellite. That is unless the Chinese beat us to it. (Not likely, but it could happen.) Caught between a rising moon and a cooling Mars, methinks the moon will remain in the public's eye.