Arrivals Around Two Worlds

When the American space probe MAVEN (with so many probes heading to Mars these days, I suppose the names are getting trickier to find) entered orbit around Mars, I took note of that even as I had to admit I'd managed to forget it was on its way. The news pieces I saw, though, also mentioned there was an Indian space probe right behind it, and aware that getting into orbit can be where problems happen I kept wondering just what would happen. However, it turned out the Mars Orbiter Mission (the acronym that can be formed from that is even odder, which may be why I only noticed it shortened that way in one piece) also got into orbit around Mars, which is an accomplishment for that country. (In looking up information on this, I managed to see that when Japan tried the same thing a few years ago it didn't work.)

It also happened in the past few days, if much closer to Earth, that another Dragon cargo capsule has reached the space station. That things continue to be working well for SpaceX there now that they're getting money along with Boeing to put astronauts in a further development of that capsule seems a good thing to me.