Forty-seven years ago, today, President John F. Kennedy stood before a Joint Session of Congress and announced the United States’ ambitious goal of sending an American to the Moon before the end of that decade. While he did not live to see that goal achieved, millions of others did, on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the lunar surface and uttered those famous words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
It is fitting that tonight, some four decades later, humans will once again turn their attention to space as NASA strives for another first, this time on a world much more distant than the moon. At 7:46 PM EDT, the Mars Phoenix Lander will enter the Martian atmosphere to attempt a touch-down landing that hinges on the success of a complex seven-minute series of events. The unmanned craft will set down in a region further north than any previous Mars’ missions, and it will sample a distant world like has never before been done – all in a quest that seeks an answer to the question, “Can Mars, or could it ever, support life?”
NASA expects that more than half-a-million viewers will tune into the live broadcast of this next major step in Mars exploration on NASA TV, not only as many people watch from their own home computers, but as dozens of museums host large-scale viewing events and Discovery Communications airs live coverage on their Science Channel, as well.
SLOOH, too, intends to tune into this momentous event. If missions are running, we’ll stream NASA’s live broadcast through SLOOHRadio, and we’ll even play that dramatic Kennedy speech, during the Phoenix broadcast’s quieter moments, or immediately following.
