Where to start and what to say. Once again man has reached out and landed on Mars. I can’t come close to finding the words to express the amazement I have for those at NASA and the Phoenix project in my home state of Arizona. I held my breath and crossed my fingers right along with the Phoenix team as it made it’s final descent. You can’t beat that drama on any reality show! If you haven’t seen the photo of the Phoenix coming in for a landing, here is the link. http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080526-phoenix-mission-update.html

It’s not just the millions of miles the Phoenix traveled. It’s partly the fact that it traveled that far and nothing collided with it, no micro-meteors, nor solar storms, pretty smooth sailing. Multiply that by the fact that all that metal and circuitry built by man, made it all those miles with no failures. Again amazing!

Now we see first images of Mars’ “earth” that has the initial look of the earth at our polar ice caps. We have pondered, manipulated and created so many Martian worlds and scenarios in science fiction and now real data of this alien world are before us.

I often say that movies like Star Wars got me hooked on science fiction, but in reading the hundreds of blogs and articles posted in the last few days it struck me that it has been a fascination with space travel that hooked me at a very young age. My fondest memories are those from my youth with my family sitting at our wooden picnic table in the back yard. We’d cook up some burgers and carry the television on to the porch to watch and listen to NASA’s every word.

I remember staring at the moon the moment the first astronaut sat foot on the moon. Will I get to sit in my back yard with my family again, only this time to look at Mars through the telescope as astronauts set foot on the red soil of Mars. I certainly hope so.

It’s great fun creating worlds such as I did in my book The Charon Covenant and strange and unusual beings that have traveled from out of this universe and sometimes from Mars itself. I hope we run in to some evidence that life has been there and perhaps still there in some form.

The next few months will prove to be exciting beyond our dreams. I certainly never thought we’d see Mars up close, let alone now for another successful landing on its surface and look forward to every picture and discovery. Way to go Phoenix!