Rosetta

For anyone who's interested, there is a livestream here of the attempt to drop a lander from the Rosetta spacecraft onto the surface of a comet this morning. I AM SO EXCITED! This is an amazing, historic moment in space exploration, and, if it succeeds, it's going to be extraordinary.

I mean, it already is extraordinary. It would just be "even more so "if the landing is a success.

"We already have the cake. The landing would be a cherry on top. And it is a very exciting cherry!" So said a man from the European Space Agency whose name I missed, but he is correct!

I just watched one of the discoverers of the comet, Klim Ivanovych Churyumov, talking about how space exploration is important because it helps us understand our place in the universe, and could one day be crucial to humankind's survival, and I was all choked up by the overwhelming scope and ambition and beauty of it all.

His co-discoverer, after whom the comet is also named, is a woman named Svetlana Ivanovna Gerasimenko. A big day for women in the sciences, too!

Credit: ufoproofs.blogspot.com