Long Live Curiosity: Three Lessons from The Olympic Champion on Mars

Nasa reported the Curiosity had landed on Mars “wheels down” at 10:31 PST August 5, 2012, it’s not only the leapfrog progress for Rocket Science, but also a celebrated advancement for humanity, as some declared, is era of imagination really coming?

What can we learn from curiosity’s landing and her adventure on Mars:

1.    “The Seven Minutes of Terror” to “Seven Minutes of Triumph”

“A Seven minutes of terror” means – once Curiosity hit the Martian atmosphere, it completed a complicated set of maneuvers – including hanging from a rocket-powered “backpack” – successfully in only seven minutes time. A 14-minute communications delay meant it all had to be programmed in advance, with no room for error. Had anything gone even slightly wrong, Curiosity would have smashed into the planet and the $2.5 billion mission would have been a complete failure.

No wonder, rocket science is still one of the most complicated, advance & adventurous disciplines, well combination of hard science with deep courage, to turn around “seven minutes of terror” to “Seven minutes of triumph”.

2.    “Lucky Peanut” –Rocket Scientists’ humbleness and humor

As bright as rocket scientists, when watching the video, we saw them to share peanut for good luck during the landing controlling hour, we perceived the humbleness and humor: Opportunity brings risk, a success takes 99% of perspiration, but still need add 1% of luck, to accomplish such a curiosity’s journey, as human, we may just need dream big, but feel humbled at the same time.

Risk taking is required, as is pursuing curiosity. Respecting and exploring nature will take both ambition and humility, discipline and adventure should go hand in hand,

3. Life Signs on Mars –Discover Humanity in Universe

Because the Gale crater exposes several layers of Martian strata to the surface, part of Curiosity‘s mission is to look for signs of that microbial life either exists or once existed on Mars. Curiosity will go up to different outcrops and different soil types and sample them. Dig in, pick something up and analyze it. And the instruments themselves are much more sophisticated than previous examples.

That said, Curiosity is fulfilling all of our curiosities, to discover humanity in universe. 

It takes collective wisdom and collaborate effort to explore space, and demystify many puzzles facing universal humanity today.

Welcome to the era of Imagination! Good Luck & Long Live, Curiosity!