The Phoenix Mars Lander has landed on the surface of Mars and is already sending back some amazing photos. There is also a great video of the folks at Nasa JPL watching and cheering as the Lander does exactly what it was supposed to do. It has to be an amazing rush to be there and be part of a project that takes years to design and complete, and all the while not knowing whether or not your project is even going to make it out of Earth’s atmosphere, not to mention entering the atmosphere of an entirely different planet.

Mars (space in general) has always intrigued me. I never was into Star Wars or Star Trek, that stuff if fake. I like the real stuff.

I do believe that there is life outside of Earth. That doesn’t mean that I believe in little green men that come and give us Earthlings a light show every now and then, but I do believe there is life out there. Think about it, if you will. There are an unknown amount of galaxies out there and each of those galaxies have their own stars and planets. The odds that there is another planet (or more than one) that is habitable has to be good. The planet may not be inhabited by any human-like creatures, or anything that we would consider animals. Or, there could be planet that is very similar to Earth. It could harbor the same plants and animals that we have all came to know and love.

Perhaps one day we will be able to see and go farther into space. Unfortunately, it probably won’t happen during the course of my life.

Fact or Fiction?

Uranus is visible to the naked eye.

Benjamin Franklin was first to suggest daylight saving.

The most abundant metal in the Earths crust is aluminium.

It snowed in the Sahara desert on 18 February 1979.

On average, an iceberg weighs 20 million tons.

The far side of the moon was first photographed by a Russian satellite in 1959.

Captain Cook was the first man to set foot on all continents except Antarctica.

The diameter of the Moon is 3 476 km.

The pressure at the Earths inner core is 3 million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure.

200 million years ago Earth contained 1 land mass called Pangaea

At the deepest point, an iron ball would take more than an hour to sink to the ocean floor. ( 11.034 km )

The largest wave ever recorded was near the Japanese Island of Ishigaki in 1971. It was recorded at 85 metres high.

Antarctic means ‘ opposite the Artic ‘.
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