[longtermmemmory]

Ahhh so the landings were timed to go with the state of the union address. (the french are probably saying the rovers bumped off the beagle.)

[bert]

Actually, there was no Beagle.

It is a media construct dreamed up to glom onto some underdog sympathy and fame timed for maximum exposure.

They get credit for partial sucess at no real cost even though they they actually did nothing but put out some press releases.