Martian Anniversary

At 686.98 days, the Martian orbital year is roughly twice the length of the Earth year, so perhaps we can be forgiven for being jubilant early. as it has not been a full Martian year. However, it has been an Earth year since the Mars rover, Curiosity landed on the red planet, and scientific community is abuzz with excitement with what has been gathered so far. The rover has sent back to Earth over 70000 images and has tested rock samples, the presence of water and methane in its bid to discover signs of past life. All indications are that water has existed, but methane (an emission of organic life). Curiosty's findings are seen as the prelude to the much talked about manned colonisation. (I wouldn't mind myself!)

Of course the debates about the billions spent on the project do surface when this kind of attention is paid to the mission. This counter balances the argument and are very valid. After all we still haven't solved the imbalances on this planet - from poverty, to diseases, lack of opportunity and so on. 

Two post from the comments left on the BBC news article about this:

dpr1017 

So theory behind the 'spend more money on education argument'. Spend more money on education, our children grow up to be smart. Maybe they become successful scientists & meet up with other scientists. Since they are smart, they will probably have a sense of curiosity, they will want to learn new things. They might even send something to another planet to learn about that planet. Oh wait...
 
George

To all those decrying the costs of this and other exploratory space missions when millions of humans live in hunger and poverty - perhaps you should send your comments to the governments of India, Pakistan etc. They have staggering amounts of poverty and hunger yet seem well able to afford nuclear weapons and space programmes

Oh yes - we stupidly give big dollops of cash to them as "aid". 

 Read more: Independent, BBC, National Geographic, NASA