Geocaching has taken me to many cool spots, all over the country. I have been to the tops of a couple mountains, gone into caves, found lakes and cliffs and mysterious stone structures hidden deep in the woods. This morning I made a find in a place I’ve never been before. The planet Mars!
When NASA sent its Perseverance Rover to the red planet, included on it was a tracking number that could be logged on the Geocaching.com web site.
Travel bugs have been taken into space before, taking rides on the International Space Station but this is the first time one has gone to another planet!
Launched from Earth in July of 2020, the rover landed on the red planet in February of 2021. On the 17th of March, the rover sent pictures back to earth. Included in these pictures was one of its calibration chart. The tracking code is “hidden” on a 1” piece of glass that is part of that target.
This is one of those things that just tweeks my geek genes! It combines geocaching and astronomy, wow! I love it! There it was 12:40 in the morning and no one to talk to. There was no one to share my story with, a story that will be told many times later today, starting with this time!
So, tonight when you look up in the sky and see that red dot not too far away from the Pleiades and the bright star Aldebaran, just think about the rover moving around on its surface, taking pictures and sending them back to earth…and even more exciting, that you can go geocaching there!
Oh, it is the simple things (?) in life that excite me!
1 comment:
Happy you told me about this. Was fun searching for it. Thanks for the help
Post a Comment