We don’t know how NASA administrator Charles Bolden won the rights to become the first human voice transmitted from Mars, but we dearly hope the matter was settled in the traditional way — a lirpa-wielding battle to the death. Even if it wasn’t — and really, don’t tell us if it wasn’t — this is still pretty cool. Bolden’s dulcet tones rung out across the solar system yesterday from the recently landed Curiosity rover, offering a missive that is equal parts “Thank you letter to everyone involved in the project,” and, “Yeah, we landed a rover on Mars,” claim on bragging rights.
The message, which was recorded on Earth before being beamed back by Curiosity, arrived with some new snapshots of the Martian terrain, because like your Aunt Joan vacationing after she found out about Instagram, Curiosity is going to photograph pretty much every thing it gets a look at from here to the end of time. Unlike Aunt Joan’s pictures, though, you will never get sick of these showing up in your Facebook feed, because they are pictures of another planet and representative of one of the very pinnacles of human achievement, rather than YES WE GET IT YOU KNOW HOW A FILTER WORKS, GOD!
Among those shots are some particularly cool new images of the lower slope of Mount Sharp, one of the Rover’s destinations on its trip. You can get a load of those new pictures right here.
Bolden narrowly beat Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am — whose new single, “Reach for the Stars,” is set to premiere from the Rover later today — to the coveted title of First Human Voice Broadcast from Mars. Then again, to our knowledge, Bolden also has a grand total of zero Grammys to his name. So, call it a wash?
(via NASA)
- NASA engineers are officially celebrities. We couldn’t approve more
- I mean, it’s no software update, but this is pretty exciting stuff, people
- Seriously, though — we’re just never going to get sick of Mars pictures; not going to happen
