Curiosity!
As my friend Rakesh said on Facebook, "What a show, what a show!"
The Mars Science Laboratory AKA Curiosity, made it safely to Mars tonight, touching down without incident, and all systems, including the Skycrane, functioned properly. To the vast joy of all tuning in, it then sent back three photos of the landing site, complete with wheel in the frame. You so myspacey, Curiosity!
arib and I hung out on IM together, chatting back and forth, watching the NASA livestream, counting down nervous minutes until landing, and then celebrating together as the JPL team saw all their hard work come to fruition.
I am especially attached to Curiosity, since it's basically the next best thing to sending a human geologist to Mars, and actually might be a better thing, since it can work tirelessly and doesn't need to breathe oxygen. The rover is powered by an internal nuclear source, rather than solar panels, so its expected working lifespan is fourteen years. This so very, very exciting. It would be a dream for me to work on the data that will soon be coming back, but since that probably won't happen, I can only hope I get to read the papers, meet the scientists, and then teach the wondrous new science to the students in my future classroom.
This is a proud day for me, as a scientist, as a curious human being, and yes, as an American.
Well worth staying up for.
<3
The Mars Science Laboratory AKA Curiosity, made it safely to Mars tonight, touching down without incident, and all systems, including the Skycrane, functioned properly. To the vast joy of all tuning in, it then sent back three photos of the landing site, complete with wheel in the frame. You so myspacey, Curiosity!
arib and I hung out on IM together, chatting back and forth, watching the NASA livestream, counting down nervous minutes until landing, and then celebrating together as the JPL team saw all their hard work come to fruition.
I am especially attached to Curiosity, since it's basically the next best thing to sending a human geologist to Mars, and actually might be a better thing, since it can work tirelessly and doesn't need to breathe oxygen. The rover is powered by an internal nuclear source, rather than solar panels, so its expected working lifespan is fourteen years. This so very, very exciting. It would be a dream for me to work on the data that will soon be coming back, but since that probably won't happen, I can only hope I get to read the papers, meet the scientists, and then teach the wondrous new science to the students in my future classroom.
This is a proud day for me, as a scientist, as a curious human being, and yes, as an American.
Well worth staying up for.
<3