Mars Minded

TEST DRIVE: This morning we were almost normal. I yanked the kids out of bed about 7 a.m. so we could be to school by the first bell at 8:10 a.m. Of course, this wasn't CeeJ and Bee's school - it was one of their friend's schools. The school is TOPS (The Option Program) at Seward. It's an alternative learning center, part of the Seattle School District.

When Annabelle saw I was wearing a VISITOR tag, she asked why she didn't have one. Naturally, she was wearing mine within 20 seconds.

We went to the library to check the laptop/projection setup we'll be using for the Mars/Curiosity presentation on Valentine's Day. We found a couple glitches (their computer didn't recognize some of the hyperlinks I'd embedded in the presentation) but I think we can work around them - barring the Internets crashing.

WRITING 'BOUT ROVERS: CJ and Annabelle have been hearing enough about Mars and Curiosity lately, I figured it was time for them to do some writing about it.

I gave them each one of the sheets I designed for the kindergarten kids we'll be visiting tomorrow. It's a very blocky, kid-friendly version of Curiosity to color, along with with a few lines on the page to jot down what they've learned.

Annabelle wrote:
"Curiosity is a rover now being piloted to Mars to look for life. In fact, it's going there right now! Next time you see Mars in the sky, it looks sorta red, doesn't it? Back to Curiosity, with other rovers, like Spirit!

And also, Curiosity took ten years to make, so we hope it doesn't crash. Curiosity has a lab inside of it, with a beam that analyzes the dirt on Mars.

Photos of Mars have been taken before, we just want to learn more. Curiosity is taking a one-way trip to Mars so it will stay there. The end."

CJ wrote:
"Curiosity is a rover. It is going to go to Mars. It will see if Mars has life. If not, we will be disappointed. Curiosity will hopefully not crash.

Curiosity took ten years to make. Curiosity will not come back. Curiosity is the biggest rover yet."

ROVER PHONES HOME: Imagine our surprise today when the Mars Rover Curiosity sent me a Tweet!

Yesterday, in preparation for my Mars/Curiosity presenation on Feb. 14, I was trying to find out how fast Curiosity is traveling right now. I found one resource that says its rocket is moving 1.8 million miles a day. That blew my mind! But I was still curious about its MPH, so I sent @CuriosityRover a Tweet saying, "How many MPH are you traveling right now?"

This afternoon, the rover wrote back. (Nice of it to take a break out of its busy schedule, don't you think?). @CuriosityRover replied, "Right now, I'm traveling about 63,200 mph relative to the sun, 18,700 mph relative to Earth (Earth is moving, too)."

Very cool! Who ever thought that we'd be able to ask a interplanetary-traveling Mars rover a question and get an answer!?

IN OTHER NEWS: It wasn't all about Mars today (just mostly). We had an errand to run in SoDo, and while there, we spied a sign that said "50 percent off everything" outside the Salvation Army store. Of course we stopped in. We found several gems, including a cool wizards and dragons chess set for Rick's chess club, and a pogo stick - something the kids have been wanting for awhile now. It was just $6 - woo hoo!

After watching them attempt to get their po to go, it's clear they thought it was going to be a LOT easier. Neither one of them completed more than one jump, and you could arguably say they didn't even get one good jump in. But tomorrow is another day!