A sudden boon has been granted us.

Short version: RSVP by 2 PM Thursday, get yourself down to Navy Pier by 7 PM, and you can see the new 3D IMAX movie about the Mars Exploration Rovers. Free.

Jim Plaxco, space activist and webmaster of
<http://www.chicagospace.org/>, passes this along.

( Details of the Roving Mars event )

The IMAX site:
<http://www.imax.com/imaxweb/filmdetail.do?type=comingsoon&movieid=code__.__8>

About the film:
<http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_rovingmars_060125.html>

<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/movies/25mars.html?_r=1>

Useful coupon for $10 off parking at Navy Pier--<http://navypier.com/pdf/parkingcoupon06.pdf>> (Ordinarily, parking is $19 for one to three hours.)

See you there, Mars buffs!

...seeing the Mars lander platform in your rear-view mirror.

I am very glad that, in the same week, my taxes have paid for stealing a little bit of a comet and for evading the Martian defenses to plonk a robominion onto the surface. But I was away from TV and will now have to play catch-up on the science and tech.

C-SPAN ran the morning MER press conference from JPL, and I have taped it. Let's hope they continue to follow these briefings for a while.

Stardust and Wild 2 seem to have gotten overshadowed by the Mars fuss. (Also, I think I left my aerogel sample in Kalamazoo.) I probably should put together a talk about it.

Beagle 2 is still missing. Stumbled across a vicious column in a UK paper ridiculing the builders: "Yet it is a noble symbol of British incompetence and this glorious bellyflop must be celebrated." It's so dense with pop-culture references that I can't understand half of what is said.