Michael Sweeney Photography

Quite an Opportunity

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Yes, I stayed up to watch the NASA TV webcast of the JPL engineers’ monitoring of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover landing.

It wasn’t exactly Neil Armstrong taking that first giant leap for mankind but I couldn’t help but say out loud: “Wow. They did it!”

NASA’s Curiosity rover and its parachute were spotted by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as Curiosity descended to the surface on Aug. 5 PDT Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

That those group of people at JPL figured out how to send a 2,000-pound car to a planet over 100,000,000 miles from earth and come within 2 kilometers of their intended target while implementing a zany landing system that seemed more James Cameron than NASA just leaves me…astounded.

This is one of the first images taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT. It was taken through a “fisheye” wide-angle lens on the left “eye” of a stereo pair of Hazard-Avoidance cameras on the left-rear side of the rover. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

As I went to bed, I told a nearly asleep Monica “they landed on Mars.” I felt very Apollo.

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  1. I too am astounded that it happened and that you could watch it happen. i do not understand the science but am in awe of it what could possibly be next?

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