Spirit Lands on Mars: Red Planet Explored
Twelve wheels. Twenty-eight inches tall. A robotic explorer the size of a golf cart was about to become the first vehicle to truly roam another planet. Spirit landed in a crater called Gusev, named after a Russian astronomer who'd never imagined a machine would one day roll across its rocky floor. NASA engineers had built something that could survive temperatures swinging 250 degrees, dodge killer dust storms, and send back images humans had only dreamed about. And it worked. Perfectly.
January 15, 2004
22 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on January 15
Thirteen thousand starving people. A city under total blockade. Nebuchadrezzar's Babylonian armies didn't just want Jerusalem—they wanted to crush the spirit of…
He lasted 95 days. A former playboy and Nero's wingman, Otho seized the imperial throne through pure audacity—murdering his predecessor Galba in broad daylight …
A king who couldn't get divorced. So he invented his own church. Henry VIII simply rewrote the religious rulebook to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, …
A royal charter scrawled on parchment, and suddenly Canada becomes a divine real estate project. Francis I handed Roberval 50,000 square miles of frozen wildern…
She was twenty-five and unmarried, inheriting a throne torn apart by religious wars. Elizabeth stepped into Westminster Abbey knowing she'd have to outsmart eve…
Russia ceded Livonia and Estonia to Poland, altering the balance of power in Eastern Europe and marking a significant shift in territorial control during a peri…
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