what's your favorite space mission?
Oh wow, uh…
Well, I guess mathematically my favorite should be the one I have the most happy moments associated with cumulatively, right? So probably either Spirit and Opportunity together, or Cassini-Huygens.
Oppy and Spirit I was aware of from when they touched down to the ends of both of their missions. I wrote school reports and articles on them, drew pictures, and appreciated every new article and documentary about them that came out for years and years. Their photos from Mars were one of the brightest spots of my life during the darkest adolescent days of 7th grade, especially those eerie blue sunsets.
Cassini was always part of my life from the first newspaper articles as it approached Saturn, and it was up until it burned up in Saturn’s atmosphere 13 years later. When I went on a Student Ambassador trip to Australia when I was 14, I did a homestay with a family who lived out in the Bush at a fairly remote farm that had its own electric generator, and I marveled that they had recently gotten an Internet hookup and I was able to see Cassini’s latest images of Enceladus even there. Even though Cassini has been gone for almost a decade now, I still feel weird logging onto Tumblr and not having NEW beautiful pics from the Saturn system to scroll through because that was my experience on here for 7 years straight.
Honestly, I still get a laugh over us naming Jupiter and the moons after Jupiter's consorts, and then NASA choosing to send Juno to go check up on them.





















