Its hard to believe, but less than a year after the fiery disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia over Texas and the resulting deaths of the seven astronauts on board, the U.S. space program has experienced a string of successes that have Americans once again excited about exploring the final frontier.
Earlier this month, NASAs Mars Rover – named Spirit – made a nearly flawless landing on the surface of the Red Planet, a feat officials compared to threading a needle from 15 miles away.
Since then, the golf cart-sized rover has sent back images – at first black-and-white and then color – across 105 million miles of space, revealing in the greatest detail yet a barren, rust-colored, rock-strewn landscape. (If only my photographs would always turn out as sharp!)
The out-of-this-world postcards being beamed back to earth are just the beginning, as the rover is set to leave its parking space and explore for evidence that Mars might have been a wet world conducive to life in its ancient past.
The Mars Exploration Rover program includes a second rover named Opportunity, which is set to land on Jan. 24.
The success of the Mars rover has somewhat overshadowed another early January accomplishment by NASA. Some 242 million miles away, on the far side of the sun, the armored Stardust spacecraft flew through the gas and dust plumage of Comet Wild 2, grabbing samples that are meant to be brought back to earth in January 2006. Scientists hope to examine the precious cargo in order to learn more about the creation of our solar system.
This mission, too, has yielded amazing pictures, revealing the comets four-mile wide nucleus to be a rounded snowball of sorts, with deep pits.
These two triumphs dovetail nicely with President Bushs expected announcement this week of long term plans to establish a permanent human presence on the moon and send Americans to Mars.
The good news from NASA and the administrations plan for a reinvigorated space program are a welcome distraction from troubling world events. Americans can justifiably be proud their nation is continuing to lead mankinds quest to probe the mysteries of the universe.
My Two Cents is a weekly column where the author – who ran out of space to gush about the Hubble space telescopes recent mosaic of over 40,000 galaxies – gets in his two cents worth in spite of the old saying that states you only get a penny for your thoughts.
