Capsule Carrying Interstellar Samples Lands Safely; Lessons from Earlier Crash Helped - New York Times

I marvel at many natural phenomena, but none so much as our ability to learn and to adapt our behavior from our learning.  We learn lessons even from our bad experiences — in fact, especially from our bad experiences — and those lessons get cranked into our knowledge base for future use (albeit sometimes at enormous human cost).

For example:  in 2004, NASA's Genesis space probe crashed in the Utah desert, shattering and contaminating its solar-particle collection plates.  Years of expensive work was ruined.  Yesterday, however, NASA's Stardust probe landed safely after visiting a comet and collecting particles that may be older than the sun.  The mission project manager says the earlier Genesis failure turned out to be a blessing for the Stardust probe:

A spacecraft that could be a time capsule carrying the history of the solar system made a predawn landing in a muddy Utah desert yesterday, completing a seven-year journey of almost three billion miles with a fiery, pinpoint descent to Earth.  *  *  *

Mr. Duxbury said the [disastrous earlier] Genesis experience was "a blessing" for the latest mission because it forced the team to re-examine everything about the Stardust's design and testing, and draft strategies for dealing with a possible mishap.

"We take our hats off to Genesis for making us much, much smarter," he said.

Link: Capsule Carrying Interstellar Samples Lands Safely - New York Times.

We humans, of course, aren't the only creatures who have this wonderous ability to learn and to adapt.  Today's Washington Post reports that not only do ants learn, they also appear to teach others.  Wow.

You don't have to be a creationist to wonder whether creatures' ability to learn might be the result of divine action of some kind somewhere along the line.

Comments

[Fraank]

I wonder how the billions of dollars the gov. spent on all this wonderful searching of space is going to help those poor kids that starved to death yesterday. I am looking forward to their explanition to Jesus when they stand before Him.