This past week demonstrated the highs and lows of our fascination with space exploration. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board savaged the US space administration, NASA, for its failings in the crash of the space shuttle and the deaths of seven astronauts.
Even as we read with horror the board's conclusion that the astronauts might have been saved in a daring rescue mission using another shuttle, thousands of us stood gazing skywards night after night hoping for a glimpse of Mars. People who might normally only have a fleeting interest in space were tempted out for a look as the Red Planet made its closest pass of Earth in 60,000 years.
The vastness of the night-time sky has always captured the imagination. Early civilisations concocted fanciful explanations of the motion of the moon, sun and stars, so ours is no new-found interest. The quality of our understanding of the world and what lay beyond in the vastness of space varied over the centuries. As recently as the early 1900s respected scientists argued that Mars harboured an advanced race capable of building canals and cities.
Fifty years ago the "space race", which grew more from political expediency than from the search for knowledge, finally launched us on a path that would lead us into space and to the surface of the moon. All along the way we watched in wonderment as astronauts bounded on a dusty moon, satellites scuttled across the surface of Mars and space probes beamed back startlingly vivid images of Jupiter, Saturn and the outer solar system.
The current fixation on Mars is just the latest manifestation of our continuing interest in space, an attachment that NASA must now hope is also afoot amongst the taxpaying public in the United States. The Columbia investigation board pulled no punches when it stated that NASA was unfit to manage the shuttle system beyond the short term and that the agency lacked a strong safety culture. It determined that NASA's organisational culture had as much to do with the destruction of the shuttle as the detached piece of insulating foam which punched a hole in the doomed craft's wing. NASA will struggle to recover from the damning report and will rely heavily on the public's undiminished interest in space to pull it through the crisis.
Politicians on Washington's Capitol Hill who brandish the budgetary axe will take a lead from voter sentiment. Like a defeated gladiator, NASA will hope that ordinary citizens will give it a thumbs up in recognition of past performances.