Race To Mars

The Discovery Channel's Race To Mars is a 4 hour mini series, started Last Sunday night and will finish next Sunday. The show takes place in the year 2030. China has surpassed America in the exploration of Mars for extraterrestrial life. This fact draws America, Canada, France and Japan into a partnership to form an alliance and it's on. I watched the first part on Discovery HD it was very good, Basically what happens is some people from all different countries in the alliance get launched into space, they orbit, some don't like each other, they break orbit, they have some bad things go wrong with the ship while they're watching a fifties space movie, then they argue some more, then they get to Mars and they have trouble with their Martian Orbital Insertion because some of the electronics was made on the cheap, so the guy who doesn't like the other guys and they don't like him fixes the electronics and they like him a little more, I still see problems here though, then they land and someone gets their arm caught under a landing leg, puts him out of commission, storm comes and that's it, now you can watch next weeks conclusion, your caught up.

The Race To Mars website is very cool and has 6 mini games that are great, some you have to download others just use the flash player. One game I downloaded you drive the little rover guys and perform various tasks, you have a time limit so it's exciting, the first few times I ran out of time, but being a gamer, I never surrendered and have developed good scores, another mini game is where you try to land their ship on the surface, lots of fun, the first few times I crashed and burned, still a lot of fun, anyone can have fun with these games, try them out! plus there are forums and lots and lots of info, awesome site.

After the miniseries is complete there's a 6 hour companion documentary series Mars Rising . This documentary is shot in High Definition and in over 90 locations. The documentary will be narrated by William Shatner. This series will highlight some of the problems and challenges that have to be solved if we are to land a man on Mars. Over 300 scientists and 60 space experts were consulted in the making of this series. Finally to wrap things up on Sunday November 11 at 7 pm. Earth to Mars The Great Debate will air. This one hour special will have scientists and space experts debate the risks and challenges and dangers of the 3 year mission to Mars.


I was downloading all my software onto my new computer, I thought I have really got to blog about Virtual Moon Atlas. It's completely free and if you are a Moon fan, it is a must have. Go to their site and download either the expert or pro models, both are just great , the pro has extra pictures included, but with the expert you can download images taken by the various lunar probes and the Apollo missions separately. Once downloaded all you do is click anywhere on the lunar globe and tons of info on the particular target are displayed, click on the camera icon and images come up, more if you have downloaded the various additional packages. Below is an image taken by one of the Apollo missions of the Copernicus Crater and is waiting for you at this awesome site.


On a final note, On Wednesday September 26th. at 3:45pm EDT we will have a Harvest Moon

Called the Harvest Moon because it rises as the Sun sets, giving much needed light to the farmers working in their fields late into the night to get their crop off. Because the moon arcs low in the sky this time of year , it looks bigger and sometimes has a colour to it as we are viewing it through many layers of our atmosphere, this tends to lead to a very beautiful photo op Moon.