Word: earthed
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...humans needn't flee the galaxy anytime soon. First, there's so much room between stars that Earth likely wouldn't feel any effects of a galactic collision, though our constellations would certainly change. And second, a crash is still about 3 billion to 5 billion years away, by which time our sun will have transformed into a red giant and turned the Earth into a smidgen of charred dust...
...pictures of Earth from space...
...rovers were launched atop separate boosters. Spirit left Earth on June 10, 2003, and Opportunity followed on July 7, taking advantage of the biannual close approach Mars and Earth make as they orbit the sun. On solar system scales, a close approach is still a goodly distance - 35 million miles in 2003 - which means that the rovers needed seven months to get where they were going. Spirit landed first, bouncing down in a swaddle of air bags in Mars' Gusev Crater. Opportunity followed three weeks later, landing on the other side of the planet in what is now known...
Spirit and Opportunity did just that, aiming for vast basins that have the look of land that was once submerged. Spirit soon uncovered evidence of salts in the soil, a substance that would have been abundant in Martian seas, just as it is in Earth's. Opportunity discovered deposits of BB-sized pellets - which NASA nicknamed blueberries - that are rich in hematite, a mineral that forms only in watery environments. And by pure serendipity, in 2007 a balky wheel on Spirit dug a shallow trench in the ground, revealing the presence of white silica, another indicator of water...
...Live: A Search For Wisdom From Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth)Henry AlfordTwelve Books; 262 pages...