They’ve landed on Mars. This is what it looks like. Spotty. Should be red, but its spotty. The Spotty Planet. It took the spacecraft 7 months to get there. Though it is 91 million miles away. If you went by London Underground (3 miles every 24 minutes) it would take 19 years to arrive. Though with my free pass at least I’d get there for nothing. Rather than spending a few billion quid like the Americans at NASA have. Is Mars past Ongar? Is anything beyond Ongar?

The tricky bit was the landing. Everything else is calculated, tested, computerised to the nth degree, sorted. But then the ‘Insight’ lander has a six-and-a-half minute journey through the atmosphere of the planet, with temperatures of about 1500 degrees (doesn’t matter if they’re Celsiuses or Fahrenheits at that point, ‘fucking hot’ is all that counts; though may need to be quantified for practical purposes). But it survived and it landed, where it should have, on its little feet things, nice and gently, and bang on time. Which is why EasyJet don’t do space travel. Delays due to storms on Alpha Centuri. Act of God so you don’t get your compensation, just a cheese sandwich for 14 quid.

We now just need to wait and see if the solar panels unfurl. Cos if they don’t they need to send a shit-load of double-A batteries as soon as possible. Otherwise they’ve spent untold billions to put an ornament on a planet that no-one will ever see.

But hopefully all will be good and we’ll learn lots about the origins of the planets, ours included.

Elon Musk is desperate to go to Mars and is working on his spaceships to offer trips. Don’t know what you’d do there, other than take a few selfies til your phone died.

But I’m a little disappointed that there were no Martians to greet the landing craft. Martians have always captured our imaginations as the ultimate, go-to bad guys. Before communists came along and replaced them. And I want Martians. I want aliens. Who look like giant squid carrying ray-guns and act like Chelsea fans after a ‘good night out’.

Shame. David Bowie was right.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx