News of The New Frontier

Recently NASA’s Mars lander (Phoenix) reached Mars.  Even more recently it discovered soil similar to what we all know here on earth.  Interesting, no?

What’s more interesting technologically speaking than the stuff NASA rolls out?  Seriously.  There’s more going on in our universe now than ever (at least it feels that way).  I wasn’t around for the Mercury program or anything, so the biggest NASA stories I remember are the crash of Columbia and John Glenn’s return to space.  Now, NASA is back in the news, as are the cosmos, if you’re watching the news anyway.

Between The Google Lunar X Prize (a twenty million dollar award to the first privately funded team to launch land and operate a rover on the moon) and companies like Virgin Galactic beginning the work of civilian space travel a new era of space exploration seems to be almost here (hopefully).  The question of what will happen to NASA after the phasing out of the shuttle program in 2012 and how the privately funded endeavors will affect the landscape of space exploration remains to be seen (but it’s all very exciting).

Also, more close to home, the Discovery channel just finished airing its six part documentary on the NASA missions, When We Left Earth.  The documentary was great, very informative, but it’s also a nice reminder that not every expensive endeavor ends in failure.  There’s a little hope out in the great vacuum of space after all.