Perseverance leaves for Mars

Ready to go
Merritt Island, FL
July 2020
This screen grab originally shared on Instagram

Some days are more historic than others, and today is one of those days.

I woke up early to watch a nuclear-powered rover - @MARSPersevere - leave Earth for the final time and point itself toward Mars. We've done this before: Pathfinder/Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity. But it never gets old, and each mission goes that much further than those that came before it.

I've written before about why space exploration matters perhaps more back home than it does out there. And this is probably more true now than at any time in history. When the planet runs into turbulence, we look for inspiring achievements to remind us of the best in humanity. That we're more than what we scroll past in our Facebook feeds, and better than what we see on the evening news.

So we watch the best of the best in the scientific community do their thing and send robotic emissaries to other worlds. And we hope their devotion to advancing the state of the human race somehow rubs off on the rest of us.

#Mars2020 #CountdownToMars #Mars #NASA #Perseverance