Update: Congratulations to the NASA JPL Mars Science Laboratory team and to Curiosity for a beautiful landing. We’re on Mars! : D
Today is the big day as NASA’s Curiosity reaches the atmospheres of Mars and attempts a landing at 10:31 pm PDT. This rover, like its predecessors, is a mobile laboratory whose mission is to investigate the likelihood that the soil contains evidence of microbial life. Check out NASA’s JPL Mars Science Laboratory site to find the latest information about the landing and Curiosity’s mission.
Missions like this that NASA is still accomplishing on its minuscule budget show just how important science is to our future. It also shows the ingenuity we can produce when confronted with dire circumstances (like continual budget cuts). By studying planets like ours, we may unlock the key as to how planetary evolution diverges and perhaps even get a glimpse of our potential future if we’re not careful. Just like species on Earth share a lot of characteristics at the molecular level, so might many planets. Science is about understanding and knowledge gathering. And it’s all driven by curiosity. In this case, Curiosity with Mars.
Watch the approach with NASA and share in this moment of history to learn. Knowledge can be beautiful.
Lots of luck to the MSL team and to Curiosity! What an amazing achievement.
