**UPDATED**
IT’S BEING hailed as a “life-changing landing on Mars” and today is the day.
For the past eight years, I’ve been the Deputy Project Scientist on the Mars Science Laboratory mission, with its rover, Curiosity. It’s the most ambitious robotic mission ever undertaken by NASA, with scientific goals to match. We’re doing no less than delivering a state-of-the-art analytical chemistry laboratory to the surface of Mars, driving it up a three-mile-high stack of layered sediments, and attempting to determine whether our neighbor planet ever offered conditions suitable for life.
[...] As we said at the launch, and will say one more time on Sunday: Go MSL, and Go Curiosity!
The “Curiosity Cam” is streaming live online. The countdown to 1:30 a.m. August 6th has commenced. More at NOVA.
UPDATE: The landing and some very fun GIFs from Buzzfeed.
Made In America with taxpayers’ dollars.
Government is corupt and incompetent? Taxpayers’ tax dollars are wasted on big budget spending welfare programs and give aways to the undeserved and lazy? How long will it take for the left to grow another pair of balls, like the kind we had in the 1930′s, 40′s, 50′s, and 60′s, and tell the right to STFU and sit down? America needs resources (tax dollars) to do great things to remain great, instead of becoming average.
So glad that these big brains were not drained off into the swamp of Wall Street. Makes me so nostolgic for the days when we believed that this country could do anyting.
Another remarkeable advance in science by a government agency. Today another NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen releases a paper on climate change:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff…
The paper is embargoed until 3:00 PM today biut a Q & A on the paper was sent to me from Dr. Hansen. The results can be seen here:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/…
For some reason the links were broken. Heres the links:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/jhansen.html
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120803_DiceQNA.pdf
My wife and I have been following NASA: Mars Edition since the rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004. I stayed up to watch the reaction live. I was overjoyed as well. I love space exploration and hope the Curiosity rover makes some important discoveries.