You might think I am talking about the NCAA tournament, but NASA's Mission Madness. What is the greatest NASA mission ever? Apollo 11? Hubble? Voyager? The Mars Rovers? 64 NASA missions have been put into an NCAA style bracket. The 32 first round matches start March 19th. You get to vote for which missions advance. There is an info button on each mission you can use to learn what the mission did (just in case AD-1 and Bell X-1 don't mean much to you).
Let's take a look at the bracket (click to ebmiggen).
A couple of the intriguing first round matchups I see are FUSE (the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer) versus the yet to be launched Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter versus the yet to be launched LCROSS (I know what the mission is going to do but the acronym is too tortured for me to remember).
I am looking through there and I see some glaring omissions. Swift, the Fermi Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Telescope, and the Spitzer Space Telescope didn't make the field (and the last two are in NASA's Great Observatories program!) Are they being relegated to NASA's equivalent of the NIT?
Vote early and often...action tips off March 19th!Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.
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2 comments:
I almost have to say that Apollo 11 should win, just because of the historical significance, although it has been surpassed technically many times over. I would also guess that the next big historical one will be putting a human on Mars.
Which side is Rush Limberger on?
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