It doesn't seem like five minutes since I watched with excitement as the JPL Mars mission with Curiosity Rover on board, was skycraned on to the surface of Mars, back in August 2012. It was a memorable occasion, as the Moonbase coverage encouraged Bill Everatt to invite the crew to join him at Celtica Radio to do the first Swordcasts.
Oddly, it doesn't seem that long since the Viking Landers touched down on Mars back in 1976 and relayed back the first photographs from another world - even if it didn't look dissimilar from the Moon, the pinkish sky showed that it was clearly another planet.
Now we stand on the cusp of yet another great event, the Mars 2020 programme bringing the Persevereance Rover to Jezero Crater this Thursday. Its exciting stuff and brings back that heady thrill of the space race back in the sixties, but now with the benefit of multimedia coverage, we can watch events as they happen.
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
Nasa EYES software has allowed the vehicles progress to be tracked in realtime as it journeys to Mars and now as it comes within half a million miles of its destination, the excitement is mounting.
I for one will be glued to screens lareg and small to watch as events unfold!
Thanks for flagging this up Wote, you are our resident Martian for sure. I've been looking back on the blog at your reports of Curiosity and many other distant craft. Its a diary of wonder and great to read. Yes, and here we are again. As you say, on the cusp. It still fills me with admiration that anyone can land in effect a car on the surface of another planet and then it drives off! The sky crane is a terrific bit of kit which I think they used in 2012 as well. So here's to the mission and a big thumbs up for the red planet rover. We will persevere.
ReplyDelete