The Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission will view the sky at
3.4, 4.6, 12 & 22 microns for a period of 9 months beginning in January.
The survey telescope will serve as an effective tool for the detection of
potentially hazardous and near earth asteroids, and will prove a rich
source of study for other solar system bodies as well, including comets,
Main Belt asteroids, and small bodies out to and beyond 5 AU.

The present climate of Mars depends on a precarious equilibrium
between wintertime deposition and summertime sublimation of carbon
dioxide in the seasonal polar ice caps (~30% of the atmospheric
mass). Past obliquity changes could have altered the polar energy
balance, resulting in different climate regimes. I will present
direct infrared observations of precipitating carbon dioxide clouds
in the darkness of polar night, using radiometric data from the
Mars Climate Sounder on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
spacecraft. Snow clouds affect both the deposition process and the
polar energy balance, which controls the existence and location of
the perennial CO2 ice cap and, ultimately, global surface pressures
and the stability of liquid water.

The classical core accretion and the gravitational instability models for
planet formation are hard pressed to form long-period planets in situ
beyond 100 AU. I show that dynamical instabilities among planetary systems
that originally formed multiple giant planets much closer to the host star
could produce a detectable population of planets at large (10^2-10^5 AU)
separations through current direct imaging campaigns.