Geek Alert.

It's time to get my geek on.
As some or most of you know, I follow NASA's goings on daily. Whether it's monitoring NASA-TV's coverage of a shuttle/ISS space mission, or paying close attention the unmanned missions on Mars, I could always be seen reading weblogs and website pertaining to these subjects.
If you are Spacey-virgins, you may not know another Mars lander touched down on Mars' polar shelf. Emily Lakdawalla's Blog for the Planetary Society is an amazing source of quick-stop information on all things "Solar System". In particular, she has been very good at reporting the status of the Mars Landers, and even holds an Online Video Chat to keep subscribers up to date. All that being said, I'm super-excited about the pictures coming out of the HiRISE Camera from the Mars Orbitter. Specifically, the image to the right which is a shot of the Lander making his parachutted landing next to a huge crater called, Heimdal. It landed some distance from it, but the image is spectacular (click on the image to embiggen).

Below is the True Color image of the landing site, with the Lander at the top of the image, heat-shield to the right-center, and the heat-shield and parachute at the bottom of the image... Incredible that our technology is at the point where we can find this proverbial needle in a haystack in so short a time. The landed image was taken 22 hours after landing.

In a day and age where our news is splattered with images of war, murder, High-School shootings and soldiers coming home in coffins, stuff like this sparks the imagination and is just FUCKING cool!

While yer at home nice and cozy, this Mars Lander is sittng on Mars' pole in temperatures with a deirnal range of -80C to -30C (-113F - -22F).
(Click on the image to Embiggen)