"The evidence is exciting, even compelling, but not conclusive. It is a discovery that demands further scientific investigation. NASA is ready to assist the process of rigorous scientific investigation and lively scientific debate that will follow this discovery."

• Due to rendezvous with Mars in September of 1997, Mars Global Surveyor will spend four months dipping into Mars' atmosphere using a technique called "aerobraking."
  
  
• Starting in 1998, the Surveyor will begin compiling a systematic database as it surveys the Martian landscape and photographs unique features, such as polar caps and Mars' network of sinuous, intertwining river channels.

• Set to land on Mars July 4, 1997, Mars Pathfinder is designed to test the feasibility of a new low-cost method of delivering a spacecraft, science payload and free-ranging rover to the surface of the Red Planet.
  
  
• Once deployed, the lander will transmit back to Earth science data collected during descent through Mars' atmosphere.
  
  
• The rover, named Sojourner, will then activate an onboard camera and send back images to Earth, signifying the start of its exploration.

• On Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, scientists were intrigued by three-dimensional pictures of giant, icy fissures and evidence of a magnetic field.
  
  
• Galileo also reported that "warm ice" or even liquid water may have existed, and perhaps still exists, beneath the cracked icy crust of the moon Europa.
  
  
• Galileo found that the volcanically-active moon Io had noticeably changed since it was last observed 17 years ago by the Voyager spacecraft.
  
  
• In November, Galileo flew by Jupiter's moon Callisto, investigating the strange, pockmarked fourth moon, so different from its other active siblings.

• In April, Hubble sent back dramatic images of gigantic tadpole-shaped objects surrounding a dying star. The "cometary knots" are probably the result of a dying star's final outbursts, seen in the Helix nebula.
  
  
• The Space Telescope continues on track for measuring the expansion of the universe, sending back information that fine-tunes the Hubble Constant. Scientists are using the telescope to try and place the Hubble Constant to within a ten percent accuracy.
  
  
• Compiling a "cosmic movie" of the Crab Nebula, Hubble found the Nebula even more dynamic than previously understood.
  
  
• Hubble measured the diameters of a special class of pulsating star called Mira variables, which rhythmically change size. At 11 billion light-years away, they existed during the epoch when it is commonly believed galaxies started to form. Hubble concluded the gigantic, old stars are not round but rather egg-shaped. That discovery may preview the fate of our Sun five billion years from now.
  
  
• Hubble also surveyed the "homes" of quasars, showing that they live in a remarkable variety of galaxies, many of which are violently colliding. The complicated image Hubble sent back suggests there may be a variety of mechanisms for "turning on" quasars, the universe's most energetic objects.
  
  
• Hubble introduced us to images of what may be galaxies under construction in the early universe, being made out of a long sought ancient population of "galactic building blocks." Those images show a grouping of 18 gigantic star clusters that appear to be the same distance from Earth, and close enough to each other that they will eventually merge into a few galaxy-sized objects.
  
  
• In October, Hubble followed the spectacular dance of Jupiter's aurora, allowing astronomers to map Jupiter's immense magnetic field and better understand how it generates such phenomena.