There’s a link that’s making the rounds on my Facebook and Twitter timelines — io9 has an article about a message recorded by Carl Sagan to future Mars explorers.
I shared the link on my Facebook wall. This is the comment I appended to it:
Carl Sagan did a lot when I was very small to open my eyes to what a magnificent universe we lived in. I remember watching COSMOS and hearing him talk about when he read the Barsoom novels when he was very small and of the imaginative journeys that he took. He may not have gotten to walk on the sands of Mars, but people who were inspired by him built rovers that crunch those sands beneath their tires, and in time there will be people who plant footprints on the Red Planet who were inspired by the pictures those rovers took. When man travels out into the solar system, Carl Sagan is there in spirit.