SCIENCE: IT MOTHERFUCKING WORKS
Like every other good geek grrl with an Internet connection, I was watching the live stream from NASA when Curiosity alighted on Mars like a minivan-sized metal ballerina, and the contact high from the jubilation at the JPL has had me prowling nasa.gov for the past couple of weeks, looking at what's been shakin' in the space race since I gave up amateur astronomy as a teenager.
Answer: COOL. ASS. SHIT. With the space shuttle retired most of NASA's projects don't make it into the headlines very often (cute as Sojourner may have been, robots still have trouble with "smile winningly for the camera so the monkeys like you!"). However, there is awesome SCIENCE! being done right now on understanding solar weather and the Earth's magnetic fields--the next mission on the launch pad is a pair of tougher-than-nails probes that are going to be flown directly into the teeth of the Van Allen Belts, which make all other satellites hide under their space-beds and whimper. This is all to better understand what makes the Sun occasionally flip the fuck out and kill our weather/communication/sekrit ninja spy technology with cosmic fire. Grade-A primo example of pure science being hella useful.
But for PURELY USELESS FAITH-IN-HUMANITY-AND-THE-UNIVERSE-AT-LARGE REASONS, my absolute faaaaaavorite bit of space news is that Voyager 1, which in technological terms is a DirecTV dish's knuckle-dragging ancestor and has been cruisin' through lots o' nothin' for the LAST 35 YEARS, is just about to exit the heliopause and the influence of the sun's magnetic field and become the first person-made object to enter interstellar space.
We literally. put a bit of ourselves. out between the stars.
Literally-literally. The Voyager missions were designed in the '70s when there was plenty of chemical assistance available to promote feeling at one with eeeeeeeeverythiiiiiiing, maaaan. There are golden LPs on them going HELLO THAR ALIENS! WE KNOW HOW TO MAKE ROCKETS BUT STILL USE ANALOG SOUND RECORDING DEVICES! AND WE'RE ALL FREE TO BE YOU AND ME! Even when I was a wee lass with a star chart, the Voyager missions got my little goat with their sheer audacity. PICTURES OF OUTER PLANETS FOR EVERYBODY! WHEEEEEEE THANX FOR THE ACCELERATION, SATURN'S GRAVITY WELL!
Fuck walking on the moon as the ultimate symbol of space-age achievement. The moon race was about the Cold War and Mom/God/Apple Pie and seizing on, like, the ONE thing the Soviets hadn't already beaten us to.
You want a symbol of The Little Blue Planet That Could? A hunk of battered metal that has been blowing scientists' minds with new data for longer than my freakishly monogamous parents have been married, grooving along to "Age of Aquarius", harmony and understanding sympathy and trust abounding for ever and ever alleluia amen.
Groove on, funky traveler. Groove on.