Out of this World!

I'm sort of a space geek.  I know that we don't really do the whole space thing anymore and it's pretty much blase.  But I'm of the opinion that it's pretty awesome nonetheless.  The fact that humans can build machines that can take you to other planets, is an unbelievable feat of engineering and creativity.  NASA's one of those organizations that people take for granted.  They take up millions of millions of dollars of the federal budget, and it's easy to think that the money could be better spent in medical research, or defense.  

But I think that the next big discovery is going to be in space.  Call me optimistic, but the universe is ginormous.  Who's to say that the cure for cancer isn't hanging out on Mars?  So why this sudden fondness for space you ask?  Well somehow I got lost in all the news and craziness at work last week and somehow forgot to mention the coolest space news of the last decade!  

Somehow after 10 years, the Philae lander has successfully landed on a comet - a COMET!  I can't even parallel park, but somehow the Europeans managed to land a small space probe on the surface of a comet traveling through space.  How is that not awesome!?  I'm not sure how or why this was done, but what an accomplishment!  

All I've done today was managed to successfully answer some email and set up a classroom or 2.  I'm feeling quite insignificant all of a sudden : )

What's Next

Confession time: I'm kind of a space nerd.  I've never been to space camp and never really had any allusions of actually heading into space (after NASA saw my math test scores, I'm sure they would never let me in the door) but like most people I think the whole concept of space and spacey-stuff is just really awesome (to be scientific about it )  I'm usually all about the news stories of shuttles taking off, or the possibility of water on some distant planet.  So imagine my surprise when I sat down at my handy-dandy laptop this morning, pulled up CNN, and found a front page story on a Mars landing that I knew nothing about.  How did this happen? 

I literally heard NOTHING about it until this morning.  This should have been on my radar (sonar?) at least.  But alas, I had to hear what went down last night from fellow space-geeks on twitter, facebook and CNN.  From what I can tell, the Mars rover, Curiosity, landed flawlessly on Mars early this morning.  After landing, it sent pictures back to NASA over millions of miles of space.  Its first job will be to explore the Gale crater, where it landed, and then to raise its high-resolution antennae to beam back even better pictures over the great expanse.  Not only was NASA able to pull off this multi-billion dollar feat of science and technology, but they were also able to beam (the most spacey word I know ) images out to the masses from the Mars reconnaissance orbiter of the rover on Mars.  So let's get this straight.  They landed a rover much bigger than a bread box, millions of miles away, then were able to pilot an orbiter that was also much bigger than a bread box to snap pictures all at the same time most of the world was asleep.  How flipping cool is that?!

What makes it even cooler is the fact that since we live in the 21st century, we get to hear about it all from tons of different sources.  The rover itself has a twitter handle.  A guy working at NASA has become an internet sensation because the media caught a snapshot of his mohawk in mission control.  Nerds have been geeking out all day on Facebook and twitter.  And currently, if you google "Mars rover Curiosity", you'll receive 587 million hits.  Of course, the internet has also taken it upon itself, to give us geeks a few giggles along the way.

Obviously, I wasn't doing this but it's super cute anyway (courtesy of Geek and Sundry)

I really want Oreo to actually sell these cookies, because they are fairly amazing!

So that's my story.  I have no cool stories of exactly where I was when it happened.  I have no fun facts to know and tell (other than what I learned above from CNN).  But I do have a pretty real fascination with this story.  I can only hope that in the coming days that there will be bigger and better photos coming from Curiosity.  Maybe, just maybe, the scientists of NASA will find something amazing up there that will help us down here.  That's the whole point of exploration isn't it? 

Since we can do it, we have the duty to do it.  We'll never know what we may find until we try.