It was inspiring to watch the landing of the Mars rover, Curiosity, at the beginning of this week especially when I saw the video below about how complex and how much engineering went into the landing. I also liked the video of how excited the controllers at JPL were when the landing was confirmed.

I hope the landing and the data/pictures from Curiosity will get more people interested in funding and getting involved with space exploration. It seems that eventually we will need to colonize other planets and that it can only help to have missions like landing the rover and collecting data on Mars to increase our knowledge of space. I also believe that progress in space will translate to progress on earth e.g. technology for sustainable living in space. It would be awesome if there was space travel and colonization of space before I die (doesn’t seem likely).

Here are some pictures from Curiosity and of the team members.