Movies and Mars

After work last night I was feeling a little under the weather, so I tucked under the covers early. Extra sleep seems to work wonders, and last night was no exception. I woke up today feeling back to normal.

But before falling asleep last night, I was searching my free Roku channels for an obscure sci-fi movie from the 1950s.

I'm not sure what prompted this as I do not generally like sci-fi movies. And only recently has my appreciation for black and white movies developed (but wow - I've really been missing out. Black and white movies are the best).

As I was searching around, I stumbled across a movie called Rocketship X-M. It came out in the year 1950. Has anyone seen it?

It wasn't a particularly great movie, so I only watched for about 20 minutes.

In the movie, they are trying to get to the moon but they end up on Mars!

Which got me thinking, "Hey! How long ago did that rover land on Mars?" Remember? It was a super exciting deal last year?

Well I googled it, and it just so happens that yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the landing of Curiosity on Mars!  Isn't that neat?!

Before falling asleep, I looked at a variety of photos taken by Curiosity as well as the other two rovers that landed there in 2004 - Spirit and Opportunity.  At first, I thought to myself, "This is so neat. Mars photos."

Then I thought, "WHOA!?! THIS IS TOTALLY BLOWING MY MIND!?!? THESE PHOTOS WERE TAKEN ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PLANET."

It really is fascinating. Here are some of my favorite pics....(from space.com article and nasa.gov)

Fascinating, huh?  Looks a lot like a desert here on earth!

This link will take you to a neat CNN article on the one year anniversary. "Curiosity has collected 190 gigabits of data and sent back more than 36,700 full images and 35,000 thumbnail images, NASA said."

Happy anniversary, Curiosity! I hope you make many more discoveries in the years ahead!