Opportunity lands on Mars!
As I write this, I'm watching a live feed from the Jet Propulsion Lab on National Geographic. Nat Geo has been carrying special programmes about the mars rovers all month and it's been a real treat to watch the rovers being designed, tested and launched. One memorable part was when a program manager asks an engineer if a particular module that needs to be tested using a heavy impact, should go for testing. The downside is that if the module gets damaged, there is no replacement module, and the whole rover program will go out of schedule. The engineer hems and haws since as all engineers know, one can never be completely sure if a device will perform the way it is designed to perform. Especially not when millions of dollars and your job is at stake. The program manager, in a typical managerial fashion, wants a binary yes-or-no answer. Finally the engineer okays the test and thankfully, the module survives the crash test. It is certainly instructive to find that even in NASA, no one is infalliable and even the best engineer can have doubts.
For those who have not been following news about the Rovers, Mars has a good reputation for being a graveyard for spacecrafts. Spacecrafts have been able to crash on the surface, but not land and survive for long. NASA sent two Rovers, the Spirit Rover and the Opportunity Rover to land on two sides of the planet. The British made Beagle was also sent to land on Mars, but it was never heard from again, and it is expected to have joined the graveyard like so many before it. The Spirit Rover landed successfully and has been transmitting amazing pictures using its 1MP digital camera (more about that later) but of late, it has had hiccups with an onboard computer rebooting and resetting itself over and over again. The JPL website reports that the scientists have found a way of getting the computer out of the rebooting cycle today.Opportunity Rover landed today (Sunday morning - I'm posting from India) but landing is just the beginning of a complex process which involves getting the robotic explorer out and functioning properly. I could go on and on about the amazing stuff that has been created for the Rovers, but I'll just let you visit the JPL website and find out on your own.

The camera on board the rovers is another work of art and I'll write more about that later. For now, explore the entire mission here.

Ah, it's been so long since I posted anything. Since coming home for vacation, I've settled down into a routine of waking up, watching tv, eating and sleeping. Nothing disturbs that routine, except for the 'occassional' (well, I have been running up heavy bills here) phone call and checking of mails. I have been doing so well without being constantly on the Internet that it really surprises me. Also I've discovered that I can actually sleep before 12 pm and wake up before 9 am. I hope I can replicate that exprience once I get back to ASU. I've also put my lost camera out of my mind even though there have been times when I've missed it badly.

A month before I left Tempe, I could hardly wait to get home. A week before christmas, I was not so sure about leaving a place that I had become so familiar and comfortable with. With all the adventures and misadventures that accompanied my landing home, I couldn't wait to get back to the US. Then I slowly settled down to my good ol' routine. Now that there's hardly a week left before I leave home once again, I wish I could stay here longer. It's not every day that you can eat great home cooked food (especially my mom's vegetarian food that's really out of this world), get spoiled silly by your parents, and generally lie around like a bum and still feel great! There were also some great times I had with friends that I couldn't possibly write about here, but this trip has certainly been eventful and unforgettable.

Hurrah to NASA!

Now that the NASA Spirit Rover has landed successfully on Mars, and with no news yet of the British Beagle 2 which stopped transmitting before it was supposed to land on the planet, the United States remains the only country to have landed a craft on the planet. Makes me wonder though - in the old pioneering spirit, doesn't the land belong to the person who steps foot on it first?

The India Experience

sucks.
been here for two days, and I've hated every minute of my first 24 hours here. I've also loved every minute that I have spent at home.

The journey home was nice till I got on the Air India flight in Hong Kong. I hate to say this, but it's people from my own country who never fail to impress me. Due to some weird reason, they wouldn't let me take my carry-on luggage on board, and insisted on checking it in. Not having the greatest amount of trust in them, (but still not expecting anything of the sort that happened), I took out the laptop and gave them my carry-on, which was locked by Air India. At Mumbai airport, I got back my bag with the AI lock missing, the zipper cut out, and everything ransacked. And yes, gone was my precious Canon digital camera, my PDA and a spare battery for the camera.

I wonder if the person who stole my camera realizes how much it meant to me. Of course the compensation that AI offers is $20 per kg, so I can expect a few cents from them!

That was just the beginning of the experience. This trip has been more of a shock than I expected. How can that be, u say - after all wasn't I born in this country? didn't I live an eternity here before I went to the US? True, but now I see everything in perspective. Having always lived here, I used to expect everything to be 'the way things happen'. Not any more.

At mumbai airport, every official was prepared to be rude. (To be fair, there were some extremely nice people too). And outside the airport, everyone was prepared to cheat the 'foreign-returned' people out of some dollars. A fifteen minute trip to the domestic terminal was Rs. 950 (instead of something in the range of Rs. 100) ! Of course, I didn't pay that. But I wonder how many foreigners are fleeced out of money like that since Rs. 950 ~=$19 might seem reasonable to many. And if a very indian looking person like me can be surrounded by touts trying to fleece every dollar out of me, I wonder how badly foreigners are treated. For all our talk about hospitality.

So I was robbed and cheated and treated like dirt - all within 5 hours of landing in India.

Thankfully home was great as usual. Meeting my folks, and eating mom's food... want nothing more in life. So all I've been doing in the past couple of days is eat, sleep and watch tv.

Losing my camera still sucks, but I've been trying to get it out of my head so that I don't ruin the rest of my trip. There will not be any pictures in my photoblog from India. I will not come back with pictures of home, family, friends and Kerala. I'll come back wishing I hadn't made this trip. I wish I could be as proud of my country as I always pretend to be.