While we prefer to blog, we ignore Spirit and Opportunity

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While we prefer to blog and shut out everything except what is happening in Blogoland, we inadvertantly or selectively choose to ignore space and what great things are happening there.

Apart from Atlantis docking and spacewalks yesterday, did you know that this week, NASA celebrated the 2nd birthday of it singlemost important achievement since Neil Armstrong placed his outsized rubber moonboot into the lunar dust in 1969? Yes indeed, two little golf-cart sized roving vehicles have just celebrated their 2nd anniversary on Mars.

They were only meant to last 3 months on the Martian surface.

But guess what - the winds that blow on Mars have kept the rovers solar panels free of debris and dust and thus allow the solar panels to generate more electricity and so extend the vehicles working life expectancy beyond what was originally anticipated.

This is absolutely fantastic for the scientists who have taken full advantage of this ‘windfall’ and have utilised the vehicles to increase their knowledge about Mars. In fact, as I type this post, one of the vehicles is en route to a crater which the labcoats think will be the richest payload area to explore and sample.

The two rovers, (Spirit and Opportunity) have already paid for their multi-million mile trip by firmly establishing that water flowed in liquid form on Mars. Now the expectancy is high that the rover called Opportunity currently travelling towards a huge, distant depression nicknamed “Victoria Crater” which is 800m (half a mile) in diameter and is supposedly a potential ‘time tunnel’ ato ancient martian material that otherwise would be buried deep beneath the surface and inaccessible, will find research treasures beyond what we know.

Point of this story - your keyboard is not the only thing worthy of your attention. Look up into the night sky and see what has amazed man and women since the dawn of time until at least blogging evolved only 4 years ago and brought other interests to a screeching halt.

Become cool again by taking an interest in space. Its where our kids will be going so we might as well begin to get to know what it is all about.