There is a day-long Chinese New Year Celebration at Baltiomre's Grace and Saint Peter's Church at Park and Monument Street. The Dragon and drums parade just concluded and now there's a Tai Chi demonstration. We're going into the church now to see the displays. More photos and maybe even a movie clip on my main blog tonight.

- mike lee - baltimore

Unlike the night of the first rover landing, NASA has posted all 77 of the RAW Mars images within minutes of receiving them. This first batch of images were part of the initial transmission relayed via the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor to the Deep Space Network here on Earth. Of note in this batch are a view of the air bag bounce and retraction marks, a slab-like rock outcropping, and what look like wind or water erosion ridges. The post landing press conference is in progress now and I'll leave you to Spaceflight Now's detailed live blog. What a night...it's not too often in life that you get to see a new place on another planet.

- mike lee -

The Opportunity lander has deployed perfectly and is sending the first thumbnails and low-resolution of the surface of Mars. This second landing site was supposed to be very flat, but as can be seen in the last frame, there are some very interesting angular rock formations near the lander.

NASA adminstrator Sean O'Keefe pours champagne for the project directors and managers on stage. They each expressed their thoughts on the successful landing, and then a virtual birthday cake and LEGO toy rover were presented to O'Keefe in honor of his upcoming birthday. At the end of Q&A with the assembled journalists, a reporter from China wished the team a happy Chinese New Year and hoped the the landers will be as active as monkeys, the zodiac sign for the new year. It looks very likely that photos will be transmitted shortly after 4am Eastern. Let's see if I can get up for that.

Right after watching Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger walking through Mars mission control at NASA JPL, I flip past TBS on cable and see Arnold in the sci-fi Mars movie Total Recall.

Anyway, the Opportunity lander is stable on the surface of Mars, and there is a press briefing scheduled for 1:30am Eastern. I'm going to stay up.

Even though the only real action of the landing was audio of flight controllers interpreting telemetry and video of a bunch of people in a control room, it was incredible that we're able to monitor a spacecraft landing on another planet 106 million miles away.

- mike lee -

Signal is strong! That's Gov. Arnold gesturing with his hand, and Al Gore to his right. Both are congratulating the ecstatic team.

- mike lee -

Coinstar converts a bag o' coins to cash so we stock up on groceries before the big snow forecasted for tonight.

- mike lee - baltimore

In the last two weeks, and now as our baby Cianna enters her third month of life, she has been smiling a lot. These are true full face smiles as opposed to the bowel gas-induced grins we've been seeing. This is also the beginning of her coordinated campaign of mind control over daddy. When she starts winking, I'm dead meat.

- mike lee - baltimore

It's Chinese New Year tomorrow! The year is 4701 under the zodiac sign of the monkey. Poking around a few of the giftshops in DC's Chinatown during lunch today, I found these three cool monkey statues. I'm displaying them at work tomorrow next to a bunch of asian snacks. Here's a better photo of the little chimps. If all goes well Sunday, I hope to blog from the dragon parade, which starts at 2:30pm.

- mike lee -

...for the DC-bound MARC commuter train at Baltimore Penn Station. It's a balmy 21 degrees out.

- mike lee -