A gallery of book sculpture by photographer Cara Barer.
(This is by no means an endorsement of such whimsical behavior.)
Roadside Emergency Kit
Planning ahead for possible roadside emergencies during these months of winter driving? Here’s some advice from Bankrate.com on what to pack in a roadside emergency kit. It’s a good quick checklist to keep you prepared.
Saving Money on Auto Insurance
The Insurance Institute of America offers you these five commonsense tips to saving money on your automobile insurance. For more practical consumer advice on this and related topics, see the Haysville Community Library’s Hitchhiker’s Guide entry for Consumer Affairs.
Mars Rovers Celebrate Fifth Aniversary
Engineers Test Rover Roll-Off
The month of January is the fifth anniversary of the landing of the indomitable planetary rovers Spirit and Opportunity on Mars – an anniversary which transpires during the 400th anniversary of the year when Galileo first turned his telescope heavenward and discovered entirely new worlds. Not coincidentally, it is also the International Year of Astronomy, a fact which we will begin celebrating at the library in March.
NASA’s twin rovers were launched on June 10th and the 7th of July in 2003, and landed on opposite sides of Mars on January 4th and January 25th 2004. Their mission was initially scheduled to last just three short months – all the time that scientists thought they could count on before mechanical failure. Yet, to this very day, Spirit and Opportunity continue to explore the surface and near subsoil of Mars, contributing inestimably to our understanding of this strange and curious new world.
New Scientist magazine offers a slideshow of 13 spectacular images that highlight the discoveries and accomplishments of these two robotic explorers.
Here’s NASA’s original 2000 announcement of final plans to launch the two Mars rovers. And here’s a large collection of Mars rover images from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Here, you can get daily updates of rover activities from NASA/JPL. And here you can get all the information you need to tune in to tomorrow’s (1 pm CST) anniversary broadcast.
Spirit's Panorama of Vista at Gusev Crater
