Healthy doses of levity during serious moments
Last night, NASA had a lot riding on the Curiosity Mars Rover landing. That made it surprising and refreshing to see humour in the mission’s official tweets.
Kudos, NASA.
After Curiosity's nearly 570-million-kilometre, 36-week journey hurtling towards the Red Planet, the rover needed to land safely in the Gale crater and beam data from Mars back to Earth via the Odyssey satellite.
That’s exactly what happened at 1:32 a.m. EDT today (Monday, August 6, 2012). Amazingly, just seven minutes before touchdown, Curiosity was traveling 17 times faster than the speed of sound (for perspective, that's approx. 21,000 km/h).
This mission required ingenuity, dedication and collaboration on the part of the engineers, scientists, project teams and management. Lots could have gone wrong between the research, the design and build phases, last November's launch and today's landing. Advance to the 4:40 mark of this embedded video to witness the celebration and relief at mission control.
What was at risk? Individual careers (the blame game). Organizational reputations (NASA and Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab). Exorbitantly expensive equipment. Years of effort. Future funding for “big science” endeavours like the Mars project.
Yet with all that on the line, the team thought to go beyond sharing official tweets with snippets of info about Curiosity's design, trajectory, optimal landing target, planned landing, innovative gear onboard the rover, and countless other complex activities.
Sure, tweeps following @MarsCuriosity learned about the mission, but they also enjoyed a healthy dose of levity tweeted from NASA.
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Kudos, NASA.
After Curiosity's nearly 570-million-kilometre, 36-week journey hurtling towards the Red Planet, the rover needed to land safely in the Gale crater and beam data from Mars back to Earth via the Odyssey satellite.
That’s exactly what happened at 1:32 a.m. EDT today (Monday, August 6, 2012). Amazingly, just seven minutes before touchdown, Curiosity was traveling 17 times faster than the speed of sound (for perspective, that's approx. 21,000 km/h).
This mission required ingenuity, dedication and collaboration on the part of the engineers, scientists, project teams and management. Lots could have gone wrong between the research, the design and build phases, last November's launch and today's landing. Advance to the 4:40 mark of this embedded video to witness the celebration and relief at mission control.
What was at risk? Individual careers (the blame game). Organizational reputations (NASA and Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab). Exorbitantly expensive equipment. Years of effort. Future funding for “big science” endeavours like the Mars project.
Yet with all that on the line, the team thought to go beyond sharing official tweets with snippets of info about Curiosity's design, trajectory, optimal landing target, planned landing, innovative gear onboard the rover, and countless other complex activities.
Sure, tweeps following @MarsCuriosity learned about the mission, but they also enjoyed a healthy dose of levity tweeted from NASA.
AWESOME!!!
Thanks to Lise for pointing all this out, and I agree kudos go to NASA, I am finally off the fence and have fallen in love with Twitter.
ReplyDeleteNever saw you as a fence sitter anyhow.
DeleteDid you see the ones from later today?
"Good golly Miss MAHLI..."
"Scene of the crime...Sharing science? Guilty as charged."
Just love the tone.
Yesterday, a major science publication (Nature magazine) tweeted the following message from an international paleontology conference.
ReplyDelete@NatureNews: How to eat a Triceratops bit.ly/X1dzbQ
Serious science presented in a hilarious and curiosity-piquing way.
Then there's the tweet @NatureNews posted to recruit a Chief News Editor:
Do U like me? If so, apply nature.com/naturejobs...
If an esteemed and peer-reviewed scientific publication, with roots dating back to 1869, can write such playful tweets, then should any organizations hold back from crafting lighthearted 140-character posts?