President Obama congratulates Mars rover team

The team that successfully landed the one-ton Curiosity Mars rover on the Red Planet last week got a congratulatory phone call from the President. 

|
Damian Dovarganes/AP
NASA engineers look at image sets from NASA's Curiosity rover and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at the Surface Mission Support Area, SMSA NASA's JPL in Pasadena, Calif.

Hailing NASA's "mind-boggling" Mars landing of the Curiosity rover, President Barack Obama urged the scientists operating the craft on Monday to phone home immediately if they find any extra-terrestrials.

"If in fact you do make contact with Martians, please let me know right away," Obama told controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. "I've got a lot of other things on my plate, but I suspect that that will go to the top of the list. Even if they're just microbes, it will be pretty exciting."

Obama spoke by phone from Air Force One as he flew to a campaign stop in the state of Iowa eight days after the car-sized rover landed on the Martian surface. The touchdown followed a complex series of maneuvers involving intricately timed rocket firings, a huge parachute and cables lowering the craft to the Mars surface.

The two-year, $2.5 billion Curiosity mission includes looking for environmental conditions that might have given rise to life. However, as high-tech as it is, the nuclear-powered rover doesn't have the tools needed to detect living or fossil microorganisms. Instead, the rover will hunt for life's chemical building blocks.

"Curiosity stuck her landing and captured the attention and the imagination of millions of people not just across our country but people all around the world," Obama told the controllers, many of whom remained at their consoles. "It's really mind-boggling what you've been able to accomplish."

About to begin a three-day bus tour in Iowa, Obama couldn't resist a political point — vowing to resist efforts to cut spending on basic science. "I'm going to give you guys a personal commitment to protect these critical investments," he said.

He also couldn't resist teasing Bobak Ferdowski, the flight director for JPL's Mars Science Laboratory, whose cool demeanor and Mohawk hairstyle made him an overnight Internet sensation after Curiosity's landing.

"I've in the past thought about getting a Mohawk myself. My team keeps discouraging me," Obama said to laughter from the JPL team. "It does sound like NASA's come a long way from the white shirts, dark-rimmed glasses and pocket protectors."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to President Obama congratulates Mars rover team
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0813/President-Obama-congratulates-Mars-rover-team
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe