With all the negative news if war, famine, and earthquake, we can be thankful for news about an hour ago that SPIRIT, the Mars lander, successfully landed and has sent home photos of its environment!

NOVA had a special today on the project, and concluded with a live feed of the project personnel watching the status of the landing. Incredibly, the robot was parachuted from its capsule, fell through the very thin Martian atmosphere, was slowed by retro-rockets, and then bounced to a stop cushioned by big air bags! With a lag of 10 minutes for telemetry and commands from Earth, the robot will be on its own much of the time as it unfolds itself and begins driving around the desert environment. The link below gives some of the early pictures presented by JPL. I'm sure there will be much more over the next few days. There's also a second lander coming in a few days that will explore a different region on the planet.

Missions to Mars have been on hold for about 20 years after early visits found no evidence of life, the original driving force for NASA to visit and explore the planet. These new missions will look at places where water was likely to pool earlier in the planet's history, and look at some of the canyons and rivers that lead to these sites.

Although there has been little news media coverage of this project, I believe that looking back 25-50 years from now, the results will have much greater impact on society that most of the headline news of the past few years.