Dear Everybody--Nova (PBS) normally airs on Tuesday evenings
and will do so again, Tuesday, January 6th. It will be the
same excellent program that aired tonight (Sunday) but promises
to include in its last five minutes the latest images (in color)
from Gusev Crater (what is believed to have once been a terminal
lake basin) on Mars.

These rovers are like remote geologists on wheels... It's the best
we can do right now as they extend some of our senses down to the
planet's surface!

Excellent Resources
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landing...opsites/final/
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

For those with high speed Internet
http://www.nasa.gov/ram/35037main_portal.ram

The second Mars Explorer Rovers - Opportunity Lands:
January 25, 2004
about 4:05 pm UTC
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landing...opsites/final/

Cassini arrives at Saturn this Summer!
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm



"Seeing In The Dark" by Timothy Ferris
Pages 286-287

Perhaps the key to dying well--or living well--is to have laid in a
stock of worthy memories. To that end, when darkness is falling for
good, it is well to have in mind, in addition to memories of human love
and loss and of the natural splendors of this world--of birdsong at
dawn, the roaring spray of the surf, the sweet smell of the air in the
eye of a hurricane, the workings of bees in the throats of
wildflowers--a few memories of the other worlds as well. If you have
seen plasma arches rising off the edge of the Sun, yellow dust storms
raging on Mars, angry red Io emerging from the shadow of Jupiter, the
golden rings of Saturn, the green dot of Uranus, and the blue dot of
Neptune, the glittering star fields of Sagittarius and the delicate
tendrils connecting interacting galaxies, have watched auroras and
meteors writing silent signatures in the sky--if, in short, you have
seen not only this world but something of the other worlds, too--well,
you have lived.

So, while life is in us, and we are in it, let's keep our eyes open.