Tuesday, May 04, 2004

Is this friggin' cool or what?....................................

Yeah, I know.......War, Bush, Politics, deathdestructionmayhem.....blah blah freakin' blah....I am as guilty as anyone in getting too political in the blogosphere as well as in normal conversation.


Well, time for a little break.

As we all hash out our differences here on planet earth, there are two incredibly cool space missions going on right now that always seem to get shadowed (and deservedly so) by current events. I'm not saying the rocks on Mars are more important than civil rights being protected, but hey- WE ARE DRIVING A GO CART ON MARS RIGHT NOW!!! ISN'T THAT FREAKIN' COOL????

Here are some of Rovers latest pics- Behold 'Endurance'! .. I can't even begin to fathom the level of technology that goes in to driving a go-cart around on a planet over 60 million miles away, and then have it take pictures from multiple angles, and then beam those pictures back to us. Freaking amazing.

Then we have the Cassini-Huygens mission, the satellite sent to explore Saturn. The Cassini orbiter will orbit Saturn and its moons for four years, and the Huygens probe will dive into the murky atmosphere of Titan and land on its surface. Interesting facts:Saturn has a huge magnetosphere and a stormy atmosphere, with winds clocked at 1,800 kilometers (1,118 miles) per hour near its equator and Huygens will be the furthest human-made object ever to land on a celestial body.

I'm still in awe of this most recent image here of Saturn from Cassini, the detail is stunning....

And I have to add some more links to the astronomy section.......


Rant over, just wanted to yak about the cool space stuff going on for a change of pace.....

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