Or at least, that's the way Sammy Hagar sings it. Every 26 months (give or take a nanosecond here or there), the Earth & Mars approach close enough that a spacecraft journeying between the two planets can do so with a minimal amount of fuel and time. This year happened to be one of those times, and now we're bombarding the Red Planet with all sorts of scientific instruments. First Japan's Nozomi satellite, which was lost when it ran out of propellant and literally missed the planet (in cosmic terms). The European Space Agency's "Beagle 2" lander appears to have met the planet somewhat forcefully on Christmas Day, never to be heard from again. But unless you've been living under a (moon) rock, you've seen and heard about NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit & Opportunity. Spirit arrived on Mars on 4 January, bouncing 28 times into the thin Martian air before coming to an upright stop in Gusev Crater. Opportunity rolled to a screeching halt in a small crater on Meridiani Planum 20 days later. Two successful landings on the Red Planet within three weeks of each other.

In case you haven't been keeping up and want to get caught up, you can visit this month's link to the MER site at JPL, (that's "Mars Exploration Rover" site at the "Jet Propulsion Laboratory." You really need to work on your TLAs. That's "Three-Letter Acronymns") and zillions of nifty photos taken from the surface of Mars. Still waiting for little green men? Wait longer. Mars is the RED planet. Green men come from Venus. Everybody knows that!