Dear NASA & JPL,

After last night’s amazing show, I’m finding it hard to express how amazing you both are. So, hopefully, if I just describe what happened to everyone else, they’ll get the hint:

A little less than 110 years ago, on a relatively small dune in Kitty Hawk, NC two brothers from the state of Ohio set out to boldly go where no man had gone before: Powered flight. That small flight lasted right around one minute and took Orville just 10 feet off the ground. A scant 11 years later we had the first U.S. commercial flight.

In 1957 the Russians decided, “Hey, flying around on Earth is cool and all, but you know what’s cooler? Orbiting the Earth in outer freaking space! Thus began the Space Race. Rockets everywhere. Animals gave their lives to science (yes, probably cruel, but the scientific gain was immeasurable despite the terrible circumstances). Literally, more volume of data was generated about this new area of exploration than all data that had ever existed. Combined. Then, in early 1961, a man with nerves of steel, ice water for blood, and a hearty disregard for all things sane sat down on the top of a rocket and allowed a bunch of nerds who had never even had one date shoot him into space. Yuri Gagarin took a lap, then jumped out of his capsule after it had re-entered the atmosphere and floated safely to Earth in a more normal fashion (think about that for a second… A dude floated down to Earth on some string, nylon, and a whole lot of positive thinking and we think that’s normal). BAM! Take that America. The Russians are in space. What now?!

I’ll tell you what now: Alan Shepard. He got to space and actually controlled his space craft. Gagarin had auto-pilot. John Glenn was next up. He got to space, took THREE laps, then landed in the ocean. This was not the first time America had taken an “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better” stance, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Around the time that circling the planet in a small capsule had become old hat, a scrappy young war vet turned President had this to say about Space Exploration:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

John F. Kennedy,
Speech at Rice University, Houston, 12 September 1962

So we did. After lots of trial, error, and tragedy Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and the sadly lesser known Michael Collins took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:32 AM EST on July 16th 1969 destined for the moon. They got there on July 20th. Human beings were walking on the damn moon! 

So how do you top that? How about you launch twin satellites to the outer planets with the short term goal of recording data about Jupiter and Saturn and Neptune and the long term goal of becoming the first extra-solar craft? Okay, done. FYI – Voyager 1 is (probably) just a few weeks or months away from being completely out of the solar system. She’s so far away that if she turned around right now and flew towards the Earth at the speed of light it would still take over 16 HOURS to get back. To put that into perspective, it takes light ~8 minutes to get to us from the sun.

So how do you top that? How about you start mapping another planet. Another planet close enough we could send a person there. Another planet that could legitimately be terraformed? How about we send some machines to freaking Mars? Done. To date there have been seven rovers sent to Mars. Only 4 of them have been successful (all from the US) and even one of the successful ones only operated for a few months. To be fair, the Russians got two rovers on Mars decades before we did (no, you’re thinking of the Viking Landers, that’s different) but one failed to land properly and the other stopped transmitting data about 20 seconds after landing (although if you wanted to get SUPER TECHNICAL you could consider that a success). We’re almost to the point of this entire post, but I want to talk about the little rovers that could: Spirit and Opportunity. Both of these rovers landed on Martian soil in January of 2004. Both were scheduled to perform scientific endeavors for a period of about 90 days. Spirit didn’t stop transmitting data until March 22, 2010 and Opportunity is still operational. The Russians 20 seconds is not a success. Deal with it.

Now, the whole crux of this post. The Mars Curiosity rover. Let’s talk about how freaking genius this mission is and how amazingly well it was executed. Remember earlier how I talked about the Wright Bros. flight? In the lifespan of an oak tree, most turtles, and at least 9 confirmed and 2 disputed human beings, society has gone from being amazed and terrified of powered flight to not even caring about sending a rover to Mars. Well, most of you don’t care. Most of you didn’t watch it with bated breath, like I did. Some of you did, though, and now we share a bond of geekiness that can never be broken. Here’s what happened (and here’s what made a grown man get tears in his eyes):

On November 26, 2011 the Mars Scientific Laboratory spacecraft was launched carrying a most precious cargo: The Mars Curiosity rover.On August 6th, 2012 at 1:32 AM (EST) the rover touched down after the second most awesome landing sequence in the history of Earth Space Exploration (the first manned Lunar Landing will hold the number one post until we get a person on Mars). First, it separated itself from the main vehicle. Then it got balanced and pointed at the right angle (not a right angle, the correct one) so it didn’t just burn up during entry. Travelling at over 2,600 MPH, the heat shield had its work cut out for it as the friction from the exceptionally thin Martian atmosphere still produced temperatures in excess of 3,800° F. The shell then maneuvered itself again in order to get ready for parachute deployment. Shortly after the parachute deployed the heat shield separated and the rover was first exposed to Martian air (to use the term lightly. Get it?). A RADAR signal was sent to determine distance from the ground and thrusters on the sky crane are engaged. The shell that has carried and protected the rover all the way to Mars separated at this point and was left behind. Forgotten. Because there was a great risk of just thrusting back into the parachute, the sky crane juked right immediately after separating from the back shell then began the controlled descent. While the sky crane was using multiple jets to slow down its descent it also lowered the rover to the surface on nylon strings. Curiosity landed softly on the Martian surface, the sky crane let go and flew off into the sunset, and within seconds of landing the rover sent back two images (that took ~14 minutes to get here) and lots of data to say that it was okay.

And that’s just how it landed.

NASA & JPL, you are awesomesauce.

Love,

Elijah