millari

I stumbled upon this while on Twitter and then hyperlinking to various places today on a break from work. It was totally not what I expected, but I found it pretty fascinating. It's a blog entry by of one of the women working on NASA's Mars Phoenix lander team, talking about what it's like to be in an all-encompassing phase of the job as the various Mars surface-exploring craft do their frenetic collection of information before they run out of sunlight with the oncoming winter, while also trying to be the mother of a young daughter who tries to understand, but doesn't always appreciate that her mom is doing something historic in another part of the country right now.

It's touching, sweet, and kind of surprising. She's very honest about the price her and her daughter are paying for her to be part of this mission, and she is not entirely without doubt about the choices she's made.