Dust Devils on Mars, Diamonds in the Sky

The Spirit Rover on Mars is still going strong after 5 years. Proving that there is life on Mars, if only the robotic type. Just recently Spirit's solar cells got a much needed cleaning. It's not much but a beneficial breeze has cleared enough dust off the solar panels to give Spirit a 30 watt-hour boost in it's daily energy budget.

Those little rovers were designed for a 3 month mission, and yet they are still going strong. There are a two factors the made this so. 1. Good Design/Planning 2. Luck. So much of what we do in space requires that combination. It's a new frontier where much is still unknown. What we can't design and plan for we must trust in luck and good fortune to take us through.

On that note, just a couple of weeks ago passed the anniversaries of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia. Yes, all three events occurred on the calender within just a few days of each other. I sincerely hope that they are the last deaths in our quest for the stars, but I doubt they will be.

Back to happy thoughts: Diamonds in the Sky, An anthology of scientifically accurate physics orientated short stories, has recently been released as a free download(coming soon, meantime read online here). These are stories from Hugo, Nebula and Campbell-award winning authors, so it should be a good read.