Messenger

The Messenger spacecraft entered orbit around Mercury on Thursday. It’s the first craft from Earth to do that. I think that’s really cool.

I go on sometimes about manned space exploration, which I think we need to do more of, but I also like these unmanned missions. For one thing they are eminently practical when we are going someplace we don’t have much information about or where the environment is particularly nasty. They can be very useful and get us a lot of information.

But I think the real reason I like these missions is because they remind me of the missions that were done when I was a kid. I really enjoyed all that stuff and I get the same sort of feeling when I read about the ones today.

Cool.