For daze now I've been sitting slack-jawed before recent images sent to this spellbound world quite literally from others. Where man cannot yet boldly go we can sometimes hoist a robot with a camera, and (provided they survive the extremes of their voyage) marvel at the wonders they radio home. Such probes extend human senses to realms beyond their fragile fleshy reach, acting as high-tech transmissions of our eyes, ears, fingers and most of all, mind.

Mars dominates the daily news already, easily eclipsing its summer show, now that Spirit has safely landed at its mission site (dubbed "Columbia Memorial Station" to honor those lost in last year's horrific accident). Tethered for the moment the rover remains motionless, eliminating antenna glitches and identifying potential search targets. God willing it will soon enough roll into action, and may it travel many meters. (As if to illuminate potential extremes of the human heart, contrast the elation in NASA headquarters against the gloom expressed by the helpless Beagle 2 team. All attempts to contact that European surface explorer have failed; as of today it seems most sincerely dead.)

The twin vessel Opportunity comes knocking in only a few weeks. The idea is to capture as much information while it's there for the catching, then digest the material over the long haul. In fact the gluttony of Arean science proceeds at a pace not seen since 1997's Pathfinder mission featuring the smaller-crawler Sojourner robot, an event now immortalized in the introductory montage to the fifth series.

And these days it's not enough just to visit strange new worlds; now we try bringing pieces back! Enter the Stardust super-scooper, dropping in to photograph the cold, pitted Wild 2 comet some four hundred thousand kilometers away. Not stronger than a locomotive but definitely faster than a speeding bullet, Stardust is now aimed on a return trip. Great jets of fine grained dust erupt from the comet; you or I floating by would be quickly shredded. But the sticky aerogel coating on Stardust has for all we know collected samples that are currently scheduled to arrive at Utah in about a hundred weeks.

How about that? Missions actually accomplished. After the disasters of 03 it's nice to start 04 with a few notable successes. Here's to hoping we enjoy many more and alongside that hope, here at the last of the winter hiatus columns, that the inspirations sent back by our artificial proxies boosts the cast and crew of "Enterprise" as well. There's future enough for all.