Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

[Johno]

Well, that's one probe the great Galactic Ghoul didn't get!

[Nik]

I suppose the odds of it meeting one of the previous orbiters are just too remote...

Are there still several wandering around ? Was it a Russian probe that 'turned off' by mistake during fly-bay of Mars' moonlets ??

D'uh, fortunately Space around Mars is *mostly* empty...

[DonPMitchell]

The Soviet Fobos-1 was accidently disabled by an incorrect command.  Fobos-2 worked for a while and took some good pictures of Phobos, but it failed before it was able to launch two small Phobos landers.  The Russians still are looking for funding for their Fobos-Grunt ("phobos soil") mission to return samples of the Martian moon to Earth.

As for planetary satellites, an Mars:

Mars-2 (Soviet)
Mars-3
Mars-5
Fobos-1
Fobos-2
Mariner-9 (USA)
Viking-1
Viking-2
Mars Global Surveyor
Mars Odyssey
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Mars Observer (maybe, but probably not)
Mars Express (EU)

At Venus:

Venera-9 (Soviet)
Venera-10
Venera-15
Venera-16
Venus Express (EU, arrives in april)

The two American orbiters, Pioneer Venus and Magellan, entered the atmosphere.  Have other Mars/Venus orbiters decayed?  I don't know.

[Bob B.]

Google has gotten into the Mars spirit today...

http://www.google.com/logos/mars06.gif

[LunarOrbit]

They've also created a map of Mars:

http://mars.google.com

[DonPMitchell]

I saw that, although its just the USGS topographic map.  Nothing as impressive as Google-Earth, from what I saw.

NASA has had browsable planetary maps online for years.  Check this site out: http://pdsmaps.wr.usgs.gov/maps.html

NASA's "World Wind" program is a nifty alternative to Google-Earth, and it uses public-domain imagery.  All the images that come out of Google-Earth are copyrighted.  Also, Earth-viewing databases have been around for a while.  I believe the first was Jim Gray's (a researcher at Microsoft) Terraserver project in 1995.