43 years ago today, on July 20, 1969, the United States’ Apollo 11 became the first manned mission to land on the surface of our moon. The USA followed this achievement with an additional six missions as part of the Apollo program between 1969 and 1972 and a total of 12 men have had the experience of visiting the lunar surface.
Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin – Tranquility Base
And now, America continues its exploration of space for evidence of life with the landing of the Curiosity Rover on the planet Mars on August 5th. After 8 months the craft will have travelled 150 million miles from earth to join an earlier rover, Opportunity that has been collecting data since January of 2004. The decision to send the more ambitious rover, Curiosity, was made after Opportunity found geological evidence that Mars was once warm and wet, with pools of salty water that dried up eons ago.
Curiosity is about the size of an Escalade travelling 13,000 miles per hour and its landing must be in perfect sequence, with perfect choreography and timing to avoid leaving a $2.5 billion dollar hole on the face of the planet. Yippee Ki-Yay!
Wish my Escalade could do this!
In fact, it will take Curiosity 7 minutes to decelerate from 13,000 mph to zero with no margin for error. Encased in a heat shield it will let out a parachute, fire its retro rockets, be lowered by cables from a landing stage then send a signal that it is safely down. Talk about a white knuckle manuever! At a distance of 150 million miles from earth, any communications will take 14 minutes to reach NASA even travelling at the speed of light! The excitement of my own space adventure is building as the test flights have begun. It is astounding that this 2.5 billion dollar endeavor is being done entirely unmanned and by remote control. I am one person who will be anxiously awaiting the touchdown of Curiosity on August 5th!
Saturn 6 