I had followed the whole thing live, via NASA TV, on a small RealPlayer box that kept freezing and breaking-up into a shattered kaleidescope flurry of pixels as my dial-up (yes, dial-up!!!) connection struggled to keep up with the data stream. I can’t remember how many cups of coffee I guzzled, how many packets of Maltesers I munched, how many bags of spicy Nik Naks I noshed, but they saw me through the night, and I didn’t miss a thing, not one moment. I sat there, in my criminally-uncomfortable chair, gazing at my flickering PC screen, for hours… HOURS… following the tense countdown to EDL. I remember my heart was in my mouth as the control room at JPL fell silent, a sign that EDL had started… I watched everyone’s faces for flickers and traces of emotion that might be hints that something, good or bad, had happened…
I remember tears of joy and utter, utter relief filling my eyes as the engineers and scientists and techs .
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