“Dare Mighty Things”
Yesterday began with the horrible news of yet another mass shooting incident, this time at a Sikh temple in a Milwaukee suburb. Yet it ended (late) with the amazing news that the newest Mars probe landed successfully. I am not trying to demean the lives of the victims of this latest tragedy, just attempting to focus on the amazing positive outcome of the latest space science success.
Yes, I know this has nothing to do with homeland security. But it is still a reason to celebrate and congratulate NASA employees and the all the other people involved with this amazing project:
With its rover named Curiosity, Mars Science Laboratory mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes. In other words, its mission is to determine the planet’s “habitability.”
Why is it a big deal? It’s the largest and most sophisticated rover ever to land on the Martian surface. And the first since the seventies where the express mission is to search for potential signs of life. And getting it there and on the surface in one piece was never expected to be easy. How would you deal with the “7 Minutes of Terror?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISmWAyQxqqs
Despite all the daunting challenges, it got there. Don’t believe me? Well, the rover has a Twitter account, so you can follow it yourself…







