Students watch Opportunity land

"Welcome to Mars… again." \nThe quiet crowd in Swain Hall burst into applause when the live feed images from NASA's Mars Rover Mission Control were broadcast over the lecture hall screen early Sunday morning. With the news of the second land rover, Opportunity, landing successfully, students, faculty and Bloomington community members watched intently and cheered along with the NASA crew. \nAstronomy Professor Catherine Pilachowski said she was pleasantly surprised with the turnout of more than 75 people. \n"People are here because it's a wonderful thing to share," Pilachowski said. "The University is rich in all fields of human exploration, and this opportunity allows the campus and community to participate in cutting edge technology." \nThe NASA feed, provided to the Astronomy Department by the Campus Television and Radio Services, included commentary, updates and a live view of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. At 12:05 a.m., Opportunity landed on the Martian surface. According to NASA officials, the landing was "fault free" and intact. \nOpportunity landed near the equator of Mars on a relatively flat surface on the opposite side of the planet from its brother, Spirit. Together, the twin rovers make up an $820 million mission to determine if Mars was once wet enough to support the development of life. After bouncing on the surface for several minutes, the rover finally stabilized and sent back strong, clear signals to Earth. \nFor Kevin Croxall, a graduate student studying astronomy, the rovers are a unique opportunity for astronomers to learn more about what Mars might have been in the past. \n"These missions will help us refine what we do know," Croxall said. "It will help us see finer structures of the global features and learn about the history of the planet." \nSpecifically, Opportunity will look for a mineral called gray hematite. Some of the environmental conditions that can produce gray hematite would have been hospitable to life. \nAlthough the majority of the crowd was made up of either professors or students in the astronomy department, the event drew others who were curious about the Mars missions. \nSophomore Allison John's interest in astronomy and the missions drew her to the event. \n"This is a positive, good step to more detailed space exploration," she said. "We need to know more about the solar system, and these rovers are doing that for astronomers." \nWith a recent increase in NASA's publicity, President George W. Bush's recent push for more space exploration might gain more support. In a speech Bush gave on Jan. 14, he said, "Human beings are headed into the cosmos." \nThough the amount of space exploration activity has decreased in the last 20 years because of multiple failures, Americans might begin to regain confidence in space exploration with the rovers' success.\n"This will create good publicity for NASA and success of the space program after the problems with Columbia last year," Croxall said. \nPilachowski said being able to experience this historical event live from IU is just the beginning.\n"With the president's new vision of space exploration, today's students will likely live in a world where trips to the moon, and perhaps even Mars, will become routine," she said.