Los Angeles Times (July 21)
The space shuttle touched down for the last time. “Born with Columbia in 1981, the shuttle was NASA’s longest-running space exploration program….The five shuttles launched, saved and revitalized the Hubble Space Telescope; built the space station, the world’s largest orbiting structure; and opened the final frontier to women, minorities, schoolteachers, even a prince. The first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn, became the oldest person ever in space, thanks to the shuttle. He was 77 at the time.” It will take at least 3-5 years before astronauts can again depart America (this time via commercial carriers) for space. NASA is now focusing on a next generation of space flight, with the goal of manned flight to an asteroid and then to Mars. Both are distant goals and NASA’s future remains uncertain.
Tags: Hubble, John Glenn, Mars, NASA, Space shuttle
New York Times (May 29)
NASA has given up the search for Spirit, the Mars Rover whose 3-month mission in 2004 grew into 6 years of plentiful data gathering. “This is not like calling off the search for a missing human explorer. And yet it feels similar, even though Spirit is a six-wheeled robotic vehicle….it is strangely easy to personify Spirit. Over the years, it has seemed intrepid, valiant, determined. It has no consciousness, but there has been something self-knowing in the photographs it has taken of itself, with Mars in the background.”
