Feb 13th, 2024

Author: donich_admin

Goodbye Ingenuity

I’ve always loved space exploration.

My first memory is of the Apollo moon landing. I was 3 years old and I clearly remember Dad carrying me into the room with the black and white TV and him saying to my Mum “She will remember this all her life.”. I have (so far).

When I was a child I was obsessive about outer space, and read everything I could lay my hands on about it. This included every crap Sci Fi novel that Cumbria County Libraries could produce, but also an ancient set of encyclopediae owned by my Aunt Doris. This was so old that there was no mention of the planet Pluto because it hadn’t yet been discovered when the books were published. Of course now they have decided that it isn’t in fact a planet – but I disagree with this; it should have kept its status for historical reasons.

Strange to think that Pluto became a planet and ceased to be one within my Dad’s life time. In my life time, optical disk technology has also arrived and disappeared.

Anyway, today was Ingenuity’s last flight on Mars – great work by NASA as ever 🙂