What's it like to spend three months on another world? Ask the Mars rovers. NASA has created movies of the activities of both Spirit and Opportunity entitled "90 Sols in 90 Seconds' -- a "sol' being a planet's rotation period (planetary scientists use this term to distinguish another planet's rotation period from a "day," which is the 24 hour Earth rotation period). The movies -- each a 5 megabyte .mov -- are frantic black & white recaps from the main rover cameras.

I know I won't be getting to Mars any time soon, so clips like this give a fun "you are there" sensation. Some WC readers disagree with me on this, but I strongly believe that extra-planetary exploration is a useful part of a greater understanding of planetary evolution, and ultimately helps us figure out how to prevent human activities from kicking off unrecoverable non-linear environmental changes. Mars may be red, but the study of it is a nice subtle shade of green.