Curiosity has landed!
Monday August 6, 2012 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Blogging
If you have been living in a hole somewhere and missed the news, the Mars Science Laboratory, callsign Curiosity, landed early this morning very close to the target spot in the Gale Crater. It’s this kind of stuff that really gets my juices flowing. I really wanted to stay up and watch but I had to be at work at 0630 this morning and it didn’t land until well after midnight Eastern time. The picture here was taken from an orbiter as Curiosity was landing, pretty inspiring stuff.
A lot of people were down on NASA but they proved they can still pull off the incredibly difficult and make it look easy. My hat is off.
And FYI for those people out there wondering why we spend so much money on this kind of thing, we get back $10 for every $1 we spend as an investment. It’s money extremely well spent in my opinion.
The location they picked is believed to have once held water ice and they will be looking for more clues. I can’t wait to hear more from this exciting mission. Here is a LINK to the NASA Page for more info.
Clear Ether!
I stayed up to watch the landing and the press conference afterward. It was so cool! And the press isn't even talking about half the things that couldn't go wrong. Last night, they were saying it might be days before they even knew if the landing was successful because so much of our immediate knowledge came from a never-tried-before maneuver with the Odyssey satellite. So for us to even know anything already is amazing. 🙂
I'm jealous! I wish I had jsut gone into work later. Thanks so much for commenting, Jami! It really is very exciting stuff.