Mars bound

We watched Charlie Rose this afternoon — our local PBS rebroadcasts shows from the night before — and were treated to news of the red planet.

Though the current impetus is to gather data to determine whether water persisted on Mars for long enough for life to have some foothold, the Mars experts expect we'll be planning manned explorations about 20 years from now.

Helena should be at MIT by then. We're on track.

We're highly anticipating Nova this evening. They're on top of this mission and will broadcast all the latest pics.

Maybe Helena will stay up late to watch.