NASA'S "CURIOSITY" MARS ROVER MAKES A SMOOTH, TRIUMPHAL, SURFACE LANDING............

After an eleven year effort at effectively exploring the outer space horizon of the Planet Mars, the focus for the future of the American Space program, NASA celebrated the triumphal landing of a robotic rover on the surface of Mars, Sunday - succeeding at placing the $2.5 billion high tech, interplanetary, robotic explorer in a giant crater on the Red Planet, so that a detailed study can be made.  Engineer Allen Chen, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California where NASA's most ambitious study into Mars past is being headquartered and monitored, exclaimed, "Touchdown confirmed.  We are safe (and wheels down) on Mars.  As the rover came down onto the Martian surface  at a speed of 13,200 miles per hour, in a harrowing seven minute plunge through the atmosphere, required use of a rocket propelled sky crane, and a correctly opening parachute, to land without a hitch.  The rover explorer named, "Curiosity", chosen by a school child from among other submissions; landed near a wealth of Martian history, the Gale Crater, a three mile mound of layered, frozen, rock with a wide range of as much as tens of millions of years of Martian history exists.  This seventh NASA landing of a rover o Mars, the costliest endeavor involving the Red Planet, will mean "Curiosity", over the next two years will  extensively explore and climb the Gale Crater and Mount Sharp, to investigate signs of past or present Life o Mars.  The volume of Water,  any evidence of Habitability, and searching for carbon components; in the environment and evolution of Mars will be carried out.  The feeling and emotion at 1:32 a.m. Eastern Time time today, 10:32 p.m. Pacific Time  last night, experienced by many was reminiscent of the excitement of the Gemini and Apollo space missions that led up to the Moon Landings.  The possibility for this next level of Space Exploration will in a major way depend on Americans enthusiasm and resolve to prioritize the expenditure of billions of dollars more, at a time when economic instability and national debt and deficit beset us.  The wealth of  potential discoveries  counterbalances the fear and uncertainty the costs entail.  We surmounted the same challenge  fifty years in taking up President Kennedy's goal to land us on the Moon.  Now is another time, a further opportunity, like that.  Will we meet the challenge, or shrink before ourselves and others, in embracing and extending our reach through the Universe ?  God Bless the Continuing Success of NASA, the United States National Aeronautics Space Administration............Fr.  Troy