Following the Water

I'm a big space nerd. I always have been. I think the idea of space exploration is fascinating.

Today was a big day for NASA. I can only imagine how tense but exciting it was today at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

The Phoenix Mars Lander touched down on the Martian north pole today. It was the first time in 32 years that we've had what is called a successful "soft landing," a descent controlled by thrusters, on Mars. The few probes that have landed on Mars since the Vikings of the 1970s have landed using airbags.

The next probe to be sent to Mars will be the 2,000 pound Mars Science Lab, a third generation rover set to be launched next year, which will also utilize a soft landing system.

But the big deal about this mission is that it will be analyzing soil and ice samples for traces of organic compounds - traces of the life. It may also tell us if Mars was ever warm enough to have flowing water on its surface.

This is a key part to NASA's Mars strategy dubbed "Follow the Water."

We've learned some amazing things from Phoenix's predecessors to Mars.

The rovers Spirt and Opportunity, which have been on planet since 2004, have provided us new information about the Martian terrain. The Mars Pathfinder and its rover Sojourner provided analysis of Martian soil and weather during it operation from 1997 to 1998.

The Mars Odyssey has been in orbit over the planet since 2002, searching for signs of past or present water and volcanic activity on Mars. The Mars Reconaissance Orbiter has been mapping the planet for the last two years, along with the European Space Agency's Mars Express Orbiter which has been there since 2004. The Mars Global Surveyor recently spent nine years in orbit studying Mars and its moon Phobos.

I know this may sound really geeky, but this stuff really excites me.

I wholeheartedly believe that the operation of NASA is very justifiable. Granted there are probably areas within the agency and its programs, as with every governmental agency, that need to be streamlined and/or eliminated and/or monitored more closely.

As time goes on, we'll more than likely see private industry become more and more of a player in space exploration - and someday they will probably take over as the primary platform. But for the time being, NASA has a very critical role in keeping the spirit of exploration alive and development of space technology moving forward.

The agency has accomplished some really exciting stuff in the last 20 years -- even with their faster, cheaper, better attitude. Just consider some of this:

• As of March of this year, the Voyager I probe (launched in 1977) was 9.82 billion miles from Earth and the farthest manmade object from Earth
• The Galileo, launched in 1989, spent 14 years studying Jupiter, conducted man's first asteroid flyby, discovered the first asteroid moon, and launched the first probe into Jupiter's atmosphere
• The Ulysses Probe has been studying the sun for the past 14 years and has flown through the tails of two comets in the process.
• In 2001, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker probe was the first manmade probe to land on an asteroid.
• The Cassini probe was the first probe to orbit Saturn in 2004. The Huygens probe which separated from Cassini in 2005 was the first to land on another moon (in an ocean of liquid methane, nonetheless)
• In 2005, the Deep Impact probe was the first manmade object to impact a comet's nucleus and study its interior
• In 2004, the Genesis probe returned samples of solar wind particles back to Earth. Then in 2006, the Stardust probe returned cosmic dust from a comet back to Earth
• The New Horizons probe launched in 2006 will be providing the first close-up images of Pluto, sometime in 2015.
• The Dawn probe launched last fall will study the two largest members of the asteroid belt - the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres
• The Kepler Space Observatory to be launched next year will join the ESA's COROT telescope in looking for Earth-sized planets outside our solar system

From the launch of Sputnik to the landing of Phoenix on Mars, space exploration has provided countless benefits and allowed mankind to solve many mysteries of our solar system that were centuries old. No one can tell me that space exploration is not justified. Anyone who believes so is a moron. But there are a lot more mysteries that we will solve in the future.

There will also come a day when humanity will exhaust all of its existing resources on Earth and will be forced to look elsewhere to sustain our race. The steps we take today are important for that reason.

The steps we take today are providing and will continue to provide new technological breakthroughs to benefit all of mankind -- and advances in countless fields of science, from medicine to agriculture.

Mainly though, we're a race of explorers. We always have been. We can't sit still. We want to learn how to better oursleves. We have to know what's out there. Whether or not we ever come in contact with another race of sentient beings is beside the point --- we're going to learn more about ourselves, our creation, our solar system, and our universe in the process.

During the course of its history, NASA has lost 17 of its own either in flight or in launchpad exercises. Let's make sure that they didn't die in vain -- that their spirit of exploration lives on -- and we keep following the water.