These are heady days for NASA. Its mission to Mars is a scientific and public-relations bonanza. Pathfinder even landed on a propitious day: July 4.
And the Internet is proving that space exploration is like a baseball field: If you build it, they will come.
The Webmasters at NASA are as clever and farsighted as their counterparts on the Pathfinder project. Astronomers have been keeping in touch via the Internet for years, and it's only natural to open their treasure trove of Martian pictures and data to a curious public.
Preparing for the world event was a big job. The main NASA page http://www.nasa.gov - and 23 mirror sites around the world that replicate the extensive information - are designed to handle more than 100 million "hits," or requests for information, a day.
Nevertheless, getting to a NASA site was sometimes difficult last week, as the world logged in to watch the pokey little robot Sojourner amble down the the Martian surface.
A NASA spokesman said last Thursday that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) pages http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
- NASA's main Mars site - and the mirror sites had recorded 265 million hits July 4-9.
While the JPL sites were often hard to reach, the mirror sites - such as the robust Silicon Graphics http://mars.sgi.com
and Digital Equipment http://entertainment.digital.com/mars/JPL sites - were usually available.
Latest photos
The NASA sites offer the latest photos and data from Pathfinder - including Martian weather reports (daytime high temperature, 9 degrees) - as well as virtual-reality Mars landscapes built from Pathfinder's images.
Other Web sites joined the hoopla. AudioNet http://www.audionet.com/events/nasa/mars/
is offering live audio and video feeds (when available) from Mars. Warner's SpaceZone http://www.spacezone.com offers a Web magazine with latest coverage of Pathfinder and the Mir space station.
The BBC even has a site - A Weekend on Mars http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/mars/ -
which presents the Pathfinder mission as if you were aboard, "going on holiday."
And of course the major news sites - CNN http://www.CNN.com MSNBC http://www.msnbc.com ABC News http://www.abcnews.com and USAToday http://www.usatoday.com all offered coverage of Pathfinder.
The National Space Society's Mars Madness page http://www.nss.org/mars/
offers tips on throwing a Mars party, as well as photos and videos from the Red Planet.
But none compare to the extensive coverage offered by NASA. For a listing of addresses, visit Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Current_Events/Mars_Pathfinder/
Some final caveats: Downloading Mars photos and videos can be computer-intensive. Be patient, especially if you're using a slow modem and Internet connection. And be careful about Web site addresses; while www.nasa.gov will offer you images from space, http://www.nasa.com will link you to an adult entertainment site.
Computer groups meeting
Whether you own a Mac or a PC, you can learn more about your computer this week at the regular meetings of two local computer users' groups.
The Cincinnati PC Users Group http://www.cincypcug.org will be putting on a floor show at its monthly meeting, at 7:30 p.m. Monday in the main auditorium of Raymond Walters College in Blue Ash.
Here's the gig: Someone will be randomly selected from the audience to assemble a computer from pieces. If this sounds scary, stop by to see how simple it really is.
The purpose is to de-mystify the innards of the PC, and a computer expert from the club will be explaining the process and answering questions - as well as telling the hapless assembler what to do.
Applesiders, Cincinnati's Macintosh users group, will be meeting at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Forest Fair Mall. Guest will be computer author and personality Bob LeVitus (author of Macs for Dummies and more than 20 other titles). He will be talking about Macintosh clones.
E-mail Charles Brewer with questions, comments and suggestions at CBrewer@enquirer.com Charles Brewer's columns can be found athttp://enquirer.com/columns/brewer