Another Small Step

 I watched the NASA Mars Lander 'Insight' make successful touchdown on the red planet this week, not as you might suspect from a porthole window on Marsbase, but view a live feed on Twitter. The actual descent wasn't visible, but the control room nervously counting down the descent was clearly visible. It was amazing to see the action first hand on a phone, having seen the blurry monochrome pictures of the moon landing on our old cathode ray tv back in 69.

Space exploration seems to be having a subtle resurgence lately, not long ago we had the sun probe mission, this week its Mars and in a few days the Osiris probe reaches the large asteroid Bennu. Following in the wake of Insight were two cube shaped probes, wittily named Wall-E and Eva, experimental packages launched with the Mars probe to test the viability of smaller, interplanetary satellites. Wall-E successfully snapped a shot of Mars as it shot past during Insights descent.

These may be comparatively small, unmanned missions, but it does beg the question as to whether we will see man landing on Mars or the nearer planets, within our lifetimes ? I certainly hope so.