Final frontier...

Today we're gonna bear witness to two pretty cool events.

First, a Canadian is going to take a balloon up to around 130,000 feet, hopefully eclipsing the previous world record of 123,000 feet. But that's not why he's going up in the balloon - his real intent is then to jump from the balloon and freefall back to earth faster than Mach 1 and be the first "verified" human being to break the speed of sound in free fall. (some confusion exists around some previous jumps by the US Military some 40 years ago).

Ok, so that's pretty cool. I'll bet before he steps out of his capsule, its gonna be one heck of a view!!


Early this evening, NASA will be landing its Phoenix vehicle on the surface of Mars. This time they're putting it fairly far north so they can get good hard data back on ice/water content on the surface. NASA will be steaming it live here in case you don't have NASA TV on your cable or dish system.



UPDATE - NASA lands perfectly. Mach 1 skydive postponed til Monday.

UPDATE 2 - Dude didn't tether his balloon and it floated away. Doh!