Added 1 new A* page:An astute reader pointed out to me on Twitter that Thierry was echoing Han Solo in Star Wars yesterday. Specifically:
Han to Greedo: "I don't have it with me."
and
Han to Luke: "Got some old debts I gotta pay off with this stuff."
Although I think Thierry will be lucky if he proves to be half the charming scoundrel Han was. ;)
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Today's (single) page took me forever. I keep trying to do this pose and I'm not sure why because I have a really hard time with it! Blargle-argle.
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NASA's large Mars Science Laboratory rover, aka Curiosity, will land on Mars on August 5th--if it survives a surprisingly elaborate landing maneuver; apparently it isn't easy to land something that big and heavy intact, so those bright boys doing the science have got a complex routine involving multiple jettisonings and jettings, which they spell out for us in this impressively over-dramatized video:
video on Youtube
Here's a handy scale comparison: the following photo has two regular-size adult humans, surrounded by a "flight spare" for the first Martian rover, the 1997 Sojourner, in the foreground, a working copy of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed on Mars in 2004, on the left, and a test rover about the size of Curiosity on the right:
image by NASA (source)
Here's Curiosity itself, being assembled in 2010:
image by NASA/JPL-Caltech (source)
The tread pattern in those wheels, newly installed above, isn't just for traction in the treacherous Martian soil! Nope! If the Martians can read Morse code, they might get a clue as to who made the thingy what left such strange tracks:
image by NASA/JPL (source)
"JPL" standing for NASA's "Jet Propulsion Laboratory," naturally. So if things go according to plan in 39 days or so, Mars will start having "JPL JPL JPL..." stamped across it. ... For science!
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