Take a very good look at this picture…

What you’re looking at is the Phoenix Lander, parachute deployed, descending to the surface of Mars as observed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. I ask that you take a good look because, in case it weren’t already obvious, this is without a doubt the most breathtaking and awe-inspiring picture of the year.

On February 14, 1990, at the insistence of the late Carl Sagan, NASA had Voyager I turn around from its trek to Saturn to take a final picture of the Earth from its far-away perspective. The result was a faint, bluish speck obscured by beams of scattered sunlight. The picture, which Sagan dubbed The Pale Blue Dot, was a shattering portrait of our place in the greater universe. No longer could we think of the Earth as a greater kingdom or a significant center of the universe, but as a small dot dwarfed by the sheer size of space.

This picture, too, has a significant implication, though far different from that of the Pale Blue Dot. While we are indeed tiny beings on a tiny planet when presented on the grand stage of the cosmos, this picture represents our future and our advancement as a technologically-adept species. This photograph wasn’t taken by a human being, but by a man-made object circling another world… and the subject of that photograph is yet another man-made object falling gently to the surface of that other world. We may still have a lot to accomplish on this planet, but no longer do our goals seem limited by the thin shroud of our atmosphere. We’re now engaging our curiosity on the surface and skies of other worlds.