Last night, Anne and I got to go to the Jet Propulsion Labratory to watch the landing of the Mars Curiosity Rover. It was a powerful, emotional, inspiring experience.
When I think about how these scientists flew something the size of my car to another planet and landed it almost exactly where they wanted it to land, I feel very, very tiny indeed.
This morning, I saw a picture on Tumblr that I was positive was a fake:
It turns out that it's not fake. It's Curiosity's descent to the Martian surface, photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
So let's think about this for a moment, okay? Not only did these humans successfully land a Mini Cooper on Mars, they timed everything out so that a satellite they already put into orbit around Mars could take pictures of it.
Gene Roddenberry always talked about how amazing humans were, because we could do amazing things when we worked together.
He was right.