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Saturday, August 25, 2012

Neil Alden Armstrong, 1930 - 2012

It is an unavoidable reality of my (excellent) maritime employment that at certain times of year my posts to this blog are rather sparse. Ironically, due in part to this, it happens that the title of my last post was a direct paraphrase of the words of Neil Armstrong, who passed away today at the age of 82.

On July 20th of 1969, at 20:17:39 GMT (they didn't call it UTC back then), Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on another world. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent only two and a half hours exploring the moon's surface outside the Lunar Module, and then returned to an earth forever changed by them.

I was five years old when Armstrong took his "one small step for man". He was my hero. He still is.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

One small step for robot

This is one of the first images sent back from Mars by the rover Curiosity. It is the rover's own shadow. Much more to come.