The only thing more amazing than seeing the first photos sent by Curiosity today was looking at them together with my children. Rajiv in particular is old enough to - just barely - know the difference between pretend rockets and real ones and so he gets what the excitement is all about.
Both of them were especially fascinated, of all things, by the images of the NASA people celebrating after the landing. Rajiv said he wanted to be at the party too and when I explained that those were the people who had worked really hard to make it all happen he said he also would like to do something like that. So we decided that maybe when he grows up he can be one of the people building the rocket that will take a person to Mars. Note here how I am subtly steering him away from the plan of being such a person himself, because I am the mom after all, and Mars is kind of far away. Anyway, he said he is going to build a really fast rocket. I told him it should be fast but most importantly very safe. Not a problem: "I'll put some seat belts", he said.
We looked at lots of images and animations of the rover. By the way, do you know how hard it is to explain to a three year old and a five year old why we don't have a real video of the landing? And Rajiv would like to know how the rover manages to send the photos to us. Uhm... that should be an easy one too.
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