Exciting times at NASA!

Looks like it's gonna be an exciting time to be a part of NASA. Over the next 10 days, 2 significant missions will come to fruition.

First, the Phoenix Lander Mission will have it's landing tomorrow. It is significant in the fact that it is an attempt a landing without the benefit of cushioning devices as on the earlier Mars missions. Think of it as an Apollo landing, with no pilots and an 8 minute lag between mission controllers and the spacecraft.

Follow that mission & it's related activities via NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander blog.

The next mission, a week from tomorrow & the one that I am most excited about is STS-124. It is a Shuttle mission being flown to the International Space Station by the orbiter Discovery. It will be a mission to deliver the JPM module of Japan's Kibo module. The mission is scheduled for the 31st of May at 5:02 PM from Kennedy Space Center. I've got my fingers crossed that nothing will interrupt this, as I plan on being there.

If all goes well, a few (hopefully good) shots should make their way here :)

Catchin' up on Talk

The Google Talk team finally released a desktop installer for the online talk gadget - Google Talk Labs Edition.

Basically what's happened is that the web client has always been ahead in terms of development and functionality and the desktop client, well...neglected.

This release is basically provides an installer for the talk gadget that some of us are used to, so we can have the same experience as the gadget on the desktop. You get your calendar notifications, mail notifications and the graphic smilies as well.

I'm glad it's here and do enjoy using the functionality outside the browser, cuz some of us do actually close down our browers...sometimes :)