Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. -- Teddy RooseveltLast night after a journey of several hundred million miles a small hunk of metal successfully touched down rather softly on the surface of Mars. 150 million miles away (and 14 minutes later) a large group of people started jumping up and down. This is the spirit of human exploration and a desire to dare mighty things.
The scientists at the JPL and NASA may just be smiling for days if not weeks.
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| A happy John Grunsfeld speaking with reporters after the landing. |
This is a great video. It's hard to imagine, knowing some JPL scientists myself who can sometimes be very cynical, that they can actually get so excited/happy in mass. :) But it is a testament to how awesome this is. Great post.
ReplyDeleteTruly awesome video and post! This is so exciting. The very fact that we were able to land the equivalent of an SUV on Mars, completely by automation, that's really cool. I love NASA's blog post title on this: "Curiosity Takes Us Back to Mars." With any luck curiosity will continue to take us even further.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I should explain the picture a little. I was watching the live video stream on NASA TV this morning and John Grunsfeld was answering questions. The only problem was that yo couldn't hear the reporter's question on the video, so it was just a video of him sitting there smiling, for like 30-45 seconds at a time, and then he would answer the question (smiling the entire time) and then sit there again just smiling while another question was asked (again with no sound). For some reason it was the funniest thing I've seen all week and I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.
ReplyDeleteThough he certainly did look happy.