Random thoughts about Space

If you thought this post was about organizing my space or your space or even your spouse's space ... NOT. (Although a friend recently related Joel Stein's (Time Magazine) definition of clutter: A man's clutter reveals his true self. A woman's clutter reveals ... shoes. I can go with that!)

BUT I meant Space. SPACE. As in deep space. The kind with stars and constellations and galaxies.

Last night at 12:15 A.M. - technically that would be August 6, 2012, in the Central Time Zone - an Event happened ( 8-5-12 in CA where the lab is). History happened. And millions of people - along with the scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab - watched it happen. Facebook, CNN, Twitter, NASA TV on our cable channels, our satellite dishes, our laptops, desktops and iPads marked the event. And I stayed up late to be a part of it.

NASA's CURIOSITY. spacecraft the size of a car, landed on Mars after an 8 1/2 months journey through space.

The landing was hyped aplenty, appropriately billed as "Seven Minutes of Terror" in a YouTube video that quickly went viral. The seven minutes refers to the time it will take Curiosity to enter Mars' atmosphere and slow to a stop from a whopping 13,000 mph in order to make a bull's eye landing within the massive Gall Crator near its equator. It was considered nerve-racking because it tests a new landing routine. Steering itself part of the way and slowed by parachutes, it will dangle by cables until its six wheels touch the ground. NASA will monitor it by the 'heart sounds' it sends out and judge its success by the pictures/data it should immediately begin sending.

In the past, only six of fourteen attemps by space agencies around the world have managed to touch down successfully. (NASA has done well, failing with only one of its seven tries).

AND IT WORKED perfectly last night. I stayed up to watch it happen: streaming NASA TV live on my laptop, eyeing CNN on TV and Twitter on my iPhone.

It was exciting. EXCITING. Twitterville was awake and monitoring Curiosity's progress. Minute by minute the men in the Lab reported hearing healthy 'heart sounds.'  (Sounded as if a baby was being born. I'm sure it felt that way to them). I felt the tension almost as if I was watching Apollo Thirteen's Jim Lovell (Gary Sinise) or NASA's Gene Kranz (Ed Harris). I actually do remember when the aborted moon landing happened and the tension that gripped the nation at the time. And I revisited it when the "Apollo Thirteen" movie came out. Yes, I know there was no human life at risk with this Mars landing of Curiosity. But still ... the future of our country's space program may well hang on the success of Curiosity. The tension was alive and well inside NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.  And so was the excitement - the tears, the hugs and high fives - when Curiosity did its thing so well! And History was made.

Will Curiosity's success  have a positive effect on the endurance of America's space program?

I find myself hoping so!