We established in a previous post that the space program and NASA will fall under the purview of this blog. Many of the advances made by the program benefit both the military side of the country as well a the civilian side, and without one there would not be the other. That said, above is a picture of the Mars rover, Sojourner which for many years served as our eyes on the planet Mars. Yeah, you got me I wanted to write about this because of The Martian, great movie and great book.

Sojourner was named via a completion that NASA held asking  students up to 18 years old to submit essays that pitched a name of a historic heroine, and a description of why that name would be fitting for the rover. The winner chose the name Sojourner Truth, an African-American woman from the Civil War era that traveled the land seeking to advocate equal rights for all men. It probably didn’t hurt that Sojourner also means traveler, a perfect name for the little robot.

Among the runner ups were such luminaries as Marie Curie, Harriet Tubman, Sacagawea, Amelia Earhart, Athena, Minerva, Atalanta and Thumbelina.

All said that above is a model of the little bugger. Originally they planned for that little bugger to wander Mars for approximately a month, and it lasted for over three. During that time it provided very valuable information on the Red Planet which set the stage for subsequent missions. I would recommend checking out the original NASA page on the mission for a couple of reasons. One, it is fascinating to see what the web looked like in 1996 (wow!) the other is for the pictures of Mars that are still on the site.

Writing about war and conflict and those things is needed. To help shape the future we need to understand the past. Sometimes though it is nice just to see what we can do when we let our natural inclination to explore take the wheel.