The Russians really do have the worst luck when it comes to exploring Mars. Their current mission, Phobos-Grunt, which was launched earlier this week, has malfuntioned and is stuck in Earth orbit. They are scrambling to salvage this misson and restart the engines to get the space probe on a trajectory to Mars, so fingers crossed and stay tuned for updates as this story evolves.

Hot on the heels of the Russion launch, the American's are also launching their newest and greatest missoin to Mars. This mission, the Mars Science Laboratory aka 'Curiosity', is slated for launch on Nov.25th.
Expanding on the fantastically successful Spirit and Opportunity rovers, this will be the largest science platform to ever be launched. That creates some unique challenges when it comes to slowing it down and landing it in Mars' thin atmosphere. Parachutes and landing bags alone aren't enough to slow down this large payload (as big as a Mini Cooper) and so NASA has come up with a very interesting and creative 'sky crane' landing system. This is something that has to be seen to believed, and NASA has posted a fantasticly detailed simulation video of the launch and landing on Mars.
The video is a few minutes long but I encourage you to give it a watch!

Asteroid YU55 will make a close encounter with the earth today, passing the earth by a distance of approximately 325,000 km.

"It is the first time since 1976 that an object of this size has passed this closely to the Earth. It gives us a great -- and rare -- chance to study a near-Earth object like this," astronomer Scott Fisher, a program director with the National Science Foundation, said on Thursday during a Web chat with reporters. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/06/uk-space-asteroid-idUSLNE7A500E20111106

However, unfortunately for us amateur observers in Kamloops, it's unlikely we'll be able to witness anything. The best time to observe it would be in the early evening on November 8 from the East Coast of the United States, and it is going to be very faint, telescopic object even at its closest approach.