Clark Lindsey, who’s covering space stuff much better than I could hope to right now, given my schedule, has some thoughts about the effect of seeing Mars on the public:

The article speculates that this sort of remote sensing of Mars via the internet will satisfy the public’s interest in the planet. I think it will have quite the opposite effect. The landers’ imagery transforms Mars from an abstraction into a real place and will entice and inspire many either to want to go there themselves or at least to want to see living, breathing, thinking representatives of the human race go there and report back their impressions and experiences in person.

No daily permalinks yet, so scroll down to January 27th. There are other good links and info there as well. And listen to Clark on The Space Show tonight. There will be a live stream available here.