Sciene Fair Saturday

Hello, Dorks!

Did you know we're just a little over a month away from NASA's launch of the next Mars rover Curiosity? Pretty exciting stuff, and just when nearly everyone you know had misinterpreted the end of the shuttle program as the end of NASA in general.

But there's no need to fear! Maybe we will move to space in your lifetime. I mean, don't hold your breath or anything, but do hold your breath cross your fingers.

The new Rover will launch on November 25 and is scheduled to make it to Mars in 2012. Which is pretty freaking awesome.

A little history of Mars missions can be found here.

Little known fact about me, but I spent my summer between 8th and 9th grades at a camp for uber-dweebs talking about astrophysics and what it would take to send a manned mission to Mars. The summer camp, Mission Mars, sadly no longer exists, but it was essentially 30 kids watching Stanley Kubrick's 2001 and 2010 over and over again between classes on space meterology, astronomy, and theoretical physics. It was a teen nerd's wet dream, and even included a day trip to Huntsville, Alabama to be envious of all the kids at actual Space Camp. We played with robots, listened to lectures that were probably waaaaay beyond our 13 year old brains, and happily spent hours studying our summer away. I'm pretty sure everyone there was either reading Ender's Game or The Martian Chronicles at the time.

Anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to new images from the surface of Mars and to, oh, learning all about WHAT'S UNDER THE SURFACE OF MARS!!!! Because Curiosity is a probing little bitch, and she's gonna get her fingernails all up in that Mars dirt to probe for ice and/or traces of aforementioned ice! Keep it cool, Curiosity!