North Pole of Jupiter

     

NASA was created in late 1958 during the waning years of the Eisenhower Administration. The Act creating NASA was the creature of the 85^th Congress which was run by Democrats. The Act was signed into law by President Eisenhower. It was a bipartisan creation, something that could never be accomplished today with the current crop of GOP-crazies in Congress. The GOP now actively supports the elimination or diminishment of our space agency and certainly seeks annually to defund it.

      Its creation was perhaps a naive expression of the USofA’s can-do attitude in its new position as the sine qua non of the victory over the Nazis and the Empire of Japan barely a decade before its creation. It turned out to be a full employment for act for geeks of every sort. Even better than that it turned out to be an incredible font of knowledge and awe at what ‘nature hath wrought.’

      This past week NASA released pictures taken by the Juno spacecraft of something we have never before seen: the north pole of Jupiter. The NASA geeks were flabbergasted.. They had no expectation that they would see the wonders photographed by Juno. This picture is dominated by blues. Those blues sharply off set the familiar reddish bands around Jupiter. It is simply stunning. I could sit in a darkened room staring at this picture and travel to the end of ends of space-time in my mind.