Today, I got up at 6.30 to watch the Mars Rover, Curiosity, come in to land on Mars. Despite it's terrifying landing strategy, Curiosity made it! I've got used to tension and seeing some celebrations over the last few days with the Olympics but watching the NASA control room on NASA TV as they received signals of progress was pretty emotional. If ever there was something that epitomises why I choose to put my trust in the accomplishments of science and the ingenuity of mankind, this has got to be right up there. To be honest, I'm not sure what blows me away most - the fact that I live in a world where science and technology enables us to remotely land a robot on Mars, or the fact that I was able to sit in my dining room and watch it live on my iPad!
The tension mean that I was a bit slow on the screen grab, but here is a shot from just after they received the first actual picture from Mars - part of Curiosity's wheel. You can see it in the background.
Well done, NASA. Well done, America. Well done, science and engineering geeks!
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