Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Curious Silence

The seven minutes of terror were over. Mission Control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena finally had the news: Curiosity had landed as gently as a feather on the surface of Mars, every step of the complex landing process proceeding with unparalleled perfection. Even the weather conditions on the red planet were ideal for the landing. It was a spectacular accomplishment.

This was a huge victory for NASA and JPL, but much of the enthusiasm got lost in the much greater excitement over the Olympics and negativity of the multiple mass murders of recent weeks. A few weeks ago, a panorama of Mars exploded onto the internet, filling the public with awe over the alien yet strangely familiar landscape. President Obama’s lauding of the great accomplishment of this mission was not met with the rapt attention of the American public the way our great space explorations of the past were. The urge to explore is still out there – in all of us – but why is it that Curiosity’s landing was so overshadowed by everything else in the news?

Read more at The Inclusive.

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