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Intersection | What Curiosity's Mars success means to Florida's Space Coast

Mars Rover
Mars Rover

August 21, 2012 | WMFE - The S-U-V-sized Curiosity is the United States' seventh craft to land successfully on Mars and by far the largest and most sophisticated. But The rover's journey began on Florida's Space Coast, where it launched nine months ago. It's a big success for NASA more than a year after the space agency retired the shuttle program, eliminating thousands of jobs on Florida's Space Coast and leaving American astronauts depending on for rides into space. This new feeling of excitement in the space community is rising as big things are starting to take shape on the Space Coast....commercial crew, more missions of various types. For more perspective on the impact of Curiosity's success we talk with space policy expert Dale Ketcham, director of the Spaceport Research and Technology Institute at the University of Central Florida, and Josh Colwell deputy director of the Florida Space Institute at the University of Central Florida and professor of planetary sciences.

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