Congratulations, NASA. You just landed a one-ton American-made automotive on Mars.
Photo credit to NASA TV, via the NY Times, via Reuters.
Curiosity, the name of NASA’s nuclear powered exploratory rover, touched down on the Martian surface early this morning. For an amazing video showing just how much it took to stick this landing, check out Curiosity’s Seven Minutes of Terror.
Some may criticize the space program as a waste of national resources. To those dissenting voices, I concede that it is important to think critically about how we use the limited resources available to us. However, I also believe that explorations in science, technology, and the arts are all precious elements of culture into which society ought to continue to invest. I want to live in a world full of beauty and nuance in which scientists and engineers, artists and architects, musicians and writers all strive to discover, create, and share new perspectives on what it means to try to love one another on this little blue planet which Buckminster Fuller once called “Spaceship Earth.”
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