Sol 90: A day of Change

A view of the NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building in
Brevard county, Florida where
spacecrafts are prepared for flights (NASA)

Curiosity is doing fine and has crossed the 90 sol mark today which means around 200 members of the science team will be heading back to their respective home institutions after having spent the previous days of the mission working at JPL's mission control in Pasadena, California. But this does not mark the minimum primary mission time (unlike the recent missions to Mars) which in Curiosity's case will be 1 Martian year or roughly 2 whole Earth years before the mission starts applying for extensions from NASA.

Sol 90 also means that the mission team will now be following Earth time and not Mars time which is longer than ours by almost 40 minutes. Which means many won't have a constantly shifting reporting time to work with. And, as this article from the Pasadena Sun shows, some will have time to do some basic civilian stuff like ... voting!

So today really is a day for change! What a coincidence. Of course what happens at the polls today (on a serious note now) will ultimately affect the federal agencies (budgets especially) like NASA and their ability to do such wonderful things that inspire AND benefit us all here on Earth. There truly might never be another nation like America.