Space race

Another heap of junk is about to collide at high velocity with the Moon to test a theory about ice possibly lying in abundance near its poles. This is important for any humans who are planning to exploit it in the near future, not in the least because they’ll need ice in their cokes when the Sun is high.
I hope any sentient creature there will get an inkling of disaster before it gets spread into infinitesimally small, some probably twitching pieces – as cows sense an approaching storm. It is almost certain that microscopic life forms will be sent to their heaven up there, presumably above the none existent sky, perhaps arriving on Earth and eventually replacing us with those of a more enlightened nature.
Man has done this before with the Moon: some eastern nation, probably China, did the same thing not long ago, I believe, though I’m not interested enough to look it up.
Man feels he has a right to blunder his way into the universe any way he sees fit, using collisions (as above), nosy rovers digging holes everywhere and left-over robots now disintegrating in some toxic atmosphere. Perhaps some earthly microbes that have hitched a ride undetected are even now mutating into exciting new forms.
Of course, I should also mention the thousands of pieces of junk flying around our own planet, some still pinging their way in orbit, some dead or dying and heading for the upper atmosphere where they will burn up, perhaps spreading some nasty part of their innards downwards in the process.
The astronauts who landed on the moon seem to have been pretty milieu friendly, leaving little else but a lot of footprints and a few leftovers like a stiff US flag and some reflecting mirrors. These will no doubt cause any visiting aliens a few headaches (if they have heads that is) unless man returns first to clean up a bit. Odds are he will return before long and I wonder how much longer it will then be before the landing sights are turned into tourist attractions with exciting new low-gravity experiences?
Will there be a Mount Armstrong, a Duke City or perhaps a Mitchell Gorge?
Mars has also had its share of unexpected intruders though it has managed to swat quite a few before they could carry out their self centered missions. One made a significant crater of its own on landing due to a mix-up over the system of measurement used by its computer to plot speed and distance, causing the brakes to be applied a little too late.
One Russian probe was zapped in the neighborhood of Phobos under mysterious circumstances. The Phobosians probably have a national day to celebrate.
The early Viking orbiters took pictures of features on the surface of Mars before flying on to oblivion and beyond. Unfortunately due to lack of detail many geological features took on the form of artificial ones when studied by those not brainwashed by science – a human impediment (not science) which may yet prove useful. Unfortunately, later orbiters with sharper eyes appear to show that these earlier signs of civilization are but optical illusions, though only when a human or an advanced robot can run rampage through the Cydonia region or accidentally comes across a beer can somewhere else, which might in turn might lead to a mysterious entrance into a Martian underground extravaganza, will most be convinced one way or the other.
I find it a great pity that these traveling rovers always seem to be put down in the most visually boring locations, so that we laypeople are left with nothing else to do but imagine letters and numbers scrawled on rocks and boulders shaped like familiar objects or gasp with limited excitement at seeing another dust devil spinning by.
I do hope we are not alone within the accessible vicinity of space and that others, whoever or whatever they are, are going to teach us a very good lesson before long.

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