Now, there is Google Mars.

(On a side note, I know the main programmer from the NASA/ASU side of this project. You can hear a short interview with him on the podcast called "Sturgeon's Law", episode 27. And as it happens, I also know the guy behind Sturgeon's Law.)

My senior year of high school, I was taking a course in physics. The teacher arranged for us to watch the launch of the space shuttle Challenger live, on one of the TVs in the library. All 20 or so of us were seated there, watching as the first school teacher launched into space. Our teacher was really excited– had he been 10 years younger (and, perhaps, 50 pounds lighter) he would have applied for the teacher-in-space program.

We watched as Challenger exploded and disintegrated, 73 seconds after lift-off. That image is as burned into my consciousness as the footage of the second plane hitting the south tower on September 11. Seven people gave their all in the effort to explore space and advance science. If I sound a little flowery in my language, it's only because I feel they deserve nothing less.

We still remember you.

I've written a small Google Homepage plug-in to display the current Astronomy Picture of the Day, along with the photo credits. It scales it using percentages, so the image doesn't screw up browser-window-width like the APOD feed in LiveJournal does. I'd recently switched my news-homepage setup from Excite to Google, and since they provide such a handy API, I couldn't resist.

It links the image thumbnail to the full-resolution version at APOD. It links the section-title to the APOD page itself (handy if you want to read the detailed background of the image). Lastly, it reproduces the complete photo credits section, links and all. It also produces XHTML instead of using HTML <center> tags. (But since I don't know if GH actually emits strict XHTML, this part might not matter.)

I've submitted it to Google for their directory, but until then you can add it to your homepage via this link.

Tonight's guest was Dr. Catherine Weitz, a scientist from the Mars project, who explained a little bit about the mission goals, the rover tech, etc. One thing I noticed, that Stewart never asked about, was the she was wearing a second watch on her wrist.

There are a flood of images coming in from the newly-landed Spirit rover on Mars. However, I am striking out in my efforts to find pictures of Spirit itself.

Any pointers to pictures, even if only illustrations, would be greatly appreciated.