Thanks to an asteroid Dante will be a star

A correction

In my original post I misidentified the late and truly great Professor Drake as “Peter Drake” rather than Michael.

Professor Michael Drake

This pains me because I met Michael on numerous ocassions and I have fond memories of my fan boy encounters with him.

In spite of being the Director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the head of the Department of Planetary Sciences he was an accessible great soul.

And he liked my cartoons.

He shepherded into existence the Cassini mission to Saturn, the Gamma Ray Spectrometer on the Mars Orbiter, the HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Phoenix Lander. And kickstarted OSIRIS-REx.

Issac Newton said, "if I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Michael was one such giant for so many UA space endeavors.

And I still have no clue what any of them involved in spite of his good-humored, patient attempts to explain them to me as I nodded along on the two memorable occasions when I visited him at his lair and we wandered through the lobby and the labs.

Many light-years ago he invited me to entertain the “Phoenix Lander” crew at a Marriott celebration and afterwards, on the porch, as celebratory cigars were passed around, I remember him pointing out Mars in the night sky.

I made the mistake of asking, “How in the world could you land a craft on an object so far away?” In spite of explaining the wonder, and the how of it, in terms that a 6-year old could understand I just nodded along, lost in the constellation of his enthusiastic brilliance, starstruck by his kind intellect.

Now, my friend, you are the future star stuff we are all destined to be. And such a meaningful life. Congratulations on the beauitful, magnificent wonder of OSIRIS-REx, Michael.