Nadia and Mars Cross Paths Again
January 4, 2004

It is well known in Nadia lore how her collection of 10's at the Montreal Olympics bumped the other story of that week.  That of the the Viking spacecraft landing on Mars.  The first in human history.

Some never got over it.  "I'll still never forgive Time for thinking Nadia Comaneci was more important that the first pictures from the surface of Mars," posted by Ashitaka on July 9, 2003 on a Mars discussion board.  "Even though I did have a bit of a crush on her at the time."

In the past 12 days, Nadia's new book, "Letters to a Young Gymnast" was published, and Mars returned to the headlines with visits from European and American spacecraft.

Today, with the successful landing of SPIRIT, Nadia and Mars are directly connected.

In the two years  before SPIRIT, and it's sister ship OPPORTUNITY, were launched last June, NASA and JPL began a program to excite the public, particularly school children, in the adventure of space exploration.

The project, "Send Your Name to Mars," collected names submitted over the internet.  All the names collected were recorded onto a small DVD disk that was attached to the landers of SPIRIT and OPPORTUNITY.  Each rover will photograph and return to Earth a picture of each DVD disk of names as they rest on the Martian surface.

"Nadia Comaneci" appears three times.  She, and 3,551,642 other names now reside in Gusev crater, planet Mars.