9 Year Anniversary, Green Energy Exploration

Credit: NASA

 The NASA rover Opportunity celebrated its 9th year on Mars.  For nine years this rover has driven in and out of craters, sand dunes and rocky hillsides.  The rover has taken tens of thousands of photos, drilled into rocks, dusted them, magnified them and examined the elements in martian rocks.  Not only has this wonderful little rover showed us Mars like we've never seen it before, this Rover has effectively demonstrated the effectiveness of green energy.  For nine years this Martian rover has been powered only by solar energy in brutal environmental conditions.  While we have harnessed solar power on Mars, it's a lot easier on Earth where we receive considerable more energy from the sun than does Mars.  Here on Earth, we have not begun to grasp the full potential and promise of green energy.

Credit: NASA, Stuart Atkinson

Shauna Theel, at Media Matters has written a definitive article on solar energy; Myths And Facts About Solar Energy.

 The Road To Endeavour

Green Energy On Mars

Photo Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell / ASU / S. Atkinson

This photograph was made possible by green energy.  The rover Opportunity has been on Mars for almost 9 years and it is still roving, taking pictures, drilling and dusting off rocks solely on solar energy.  Mars gets far less solar energy than does the Earth.   If we can run a spacecraft in the hostile environment of Mars for 9 years solely on solar energy why can't the United States transfer to a Green Energy platform and why would we want to?   One of the primary reasons for moving our economy off oil and onto wind and solar is economics.  Trillions of US dollars are sent offshore every year to places that mostly don't like us and have a history of instability.  After the BP Deepwater disaster in the Gulf of Mexico during 2010 everyone is aware of the extreme costs and environmental damage commensurate with oil economies.  The world is slowly waking up to the unbelievable costs associated with emitting large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere, leading to rising sea levels, stronger storms and droughts. 

Millions of jobs will be created building solar and wind energy farms.  Thousands more will be created upgrading our electrical grid to move the available electrical energy across our continent.  Lets go green

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