In addition to what everyone has already posted, let me remind folks that this mission represents years of work for some mission scientists. If the lander fails, everything they've been doing for the past few years (in some cases almost a decade!) becomes moot. I'm sure there are Beagle-2 scientists who are wondering now if they have a job come Monday morning. Not because of rule infractions, but because they suddenly have no experiments to conduct! Careers are ruined, sidetracked, or delayed by years and years when a space probe fails. Plus, they've been putting-in 40+ hour weeks for years leading up to this. In my view, the enthusiasm of a successful landing is wholly justified. In fact, I admire the restraint of MC personnel- heck, I'd be dancing naked on my console were I a Spirit mission scientist! (NOT a pretty sight!) Especially when you figure-in the failure rate for Mars probes overall. Many thanks to Patrick Wiggins for his up-to-the-minute account last night and early this am. Let's do it again for Opportunity. And congratulations to the entire team of scientists and engineers who put this robot on the surface of another planet. I'm feeling pretty darn proud to be a Homo Sapiens today. C. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003 http://search.yahoo.com/top2003