If you’re even the slightest bit of a space geek, you probably already know that NASA’s Curiosity rover safely landed on Mars very early Monday morning Eastern time. For those who weren’t able to stay up and watch the landing on NASA TV (or in Times Square, where I’m told the crowd was chanting “Science! Science! Science!”), have a video of the “touchdown confirmed” moment at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. You might want to have tissues handy, and definitely turn the sound on.
Yep, and I’m all misty-eyed again. *happysniffle*
Sometimes advances in science are hard for science fiction writers and readers to swallow. Where SF asks questions, science has answers, and for futurians who guessed wrong and science fantasists who prefer to paint on blank canvases, those answers can feel like slammed doors closing off avenues of speculation. But watching my Twitter feed explode with space geekery and cheers, watching a tiny, grainy picture get retweeted over 26,000 times (undoubtedly more by the time you read this), all I could think of was how many doors this opens for writers and readers, how many stories will be filled with the literally gritty details of what things are really like on Mars, and how many new mysteries we’ll be able to investigate with six wheels firmly on the ground.
“It is good to renew one’s wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has again made children of us all.” ― Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
This BBC article has a really nifty photo of Curiosity descending on it’s parachute, as seen from an orbiting satellite – the detail is incredible:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19150849
That is extremely excellent.
If you like the initial news, check out the big report at “Nature” on why Mount Sharp is so important for some exultation. The mountain isn’t as big as the big Tharsis Bulge volcanoes, but it’s still larger than a significant number of Earth’s mountains, and it wasn’t formed by volcanism or plate tectonics. Rather, the best theory available is that Gale Crater was filled with sediments from at least two major depositions, and what we see left is just the remnants from billions of years of wind scouring the inside of the crater. If any place visited by Earth-based probes has the possibility of containing fossils of any possible Martian metazoan life, it would be here.
I’m glad we didn’t have to hitch a ride with the Russians to pull this off-and I’m just waiting for the day when we land one of these things and the last thing we see before the camera goes dark is a big open mouth with lots of sharp teeth… Or, in the case of our latest triumph, Tommy Kirk in a wet suit with little antennas stick out of the headset saying, “If you reach for me , I will disappear!!”
(That’s from a hard-hitting 60′s science documentary called Mars Needs Women, for all you unscientific types out there) ***********