You'll forgive me a short blog because apart from it being a Bank Holiday weekend in Ireland, it's also that the Nasa "Curiosity" has landed on Mars today. Incredible.
So far, everything is looking good and pictures are already back. It was streamed live at 530am GMT and amazing to watch which shows the power of web broadcasting. This is one of the first pictures.
And some more
(The last one is a joke. Really.)
Amazing too that ironically today is Neil Amstrong's 83rd birthday.
It's a real pioneer project that's really been promoted and broadcast online.
Really a true internet project with plenty of youtube video and dedicated web followers. They're broadcasting live but it's so significant, they're broadcasting live to the big screens in Times Square NYC. Some saying this is the greatest space development since 1969.
You'll get it here in the NASA TV excellent website.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
Having difficulty, try here http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv
Or here http://www.youtube.com/NASATelevision
It landed at 532 GMT but you'll find exactly where it is at any given time here http://eyes.nasa.gov/launch2.html?document=$SERVERURL/content/documents/msl/edl.xml but you'll need Java.
There was the infamous "7 minutes of terror" whilst they awaited to see if it all worked out, nearly 3 billion dollars later. It takes 14 minutes for a signal to reach Earth from Mars being 154 million miles away. It will then seek out of evidence of life on mars. I'm 100% sure they'll find George Burns giving a concert.
Curiosity will be investigating for 2 years and it's part of President Obama's pledge to put people on Mars. This will lead the way.
It is a triumph of man's science and engineering.
And a triumph of webcasting because you cannot see it live anywhere else.
And a triumph for America who lead the way in space.
Even if it all failed, it will have opened the door to the next explorers because every explorer in history, had a bad day. As someone wise once said, it's far better to have tried and failed, than not have tried at all.
So they had to take a risk with money and effort.
The world just changed.
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