In today's congratulatory phone call to the team behind NASA's Mars Curiosity rover , President Barack Obama made sure that if the mission discovers Martians, he'll be one of the first to know. "If in fact you do make contact with Martians, please let me know right away," Obama said during the call, "I've got a lot of things on my plate, but I expect that that will go to the top of the list. Even if they're just microbes , it will be pretty exciting." Obama also said he was impressed by the attention that's been paid to flight director Bobak Ferdowsi, the "Mohawk Guy" whose star-spangled haircut and warmhearted behavior during Curiosity's Aug. 5 landing won him Internet fame. "I, in the past, thought about getting a Mohawk myself," Obama joked. "But my team keeps on discouraging me. And now that he's received marriage proposals and thousands of new Twitter followers, I think I'm going to go back to my team and see if it makes sense." The congratulatory phone call is a tradition for the White House. But it was clear that Obama particularly enjoyed congratulating the scientists and engineers behind the amazingly successful landing of NASA's newest Mars exploration. He also said the achievement reflected the American spirit, and he gave his personal promise to protect these critical investments in science and technology. "This is the kind of thing that inspires kids across the country," he said. "They're telling their moms and dads they want to be part of a Mars mission, maybe even the first person to walk on Mars. And that kind of inspiration is the byproduct of work of the sort that you guys have done." The Curiosity rover's $2.5 billion mission focuses on studying billions of years' worth of geology on Mars and determining whether the planet was ever potentially suitable for people to live in. The mission is not specifically designed to explore life, even on the range of microbes, but it could point the way for future life-exploration experiments. What can we learn from the passage ?
Bobak Ferdowsi got a Mohawk haircut to win great Internet fame. Obama called on the government and companies to invest in science. America's president seldom congratulates on scientific achievements. Children showed special interest in the landing of Curiosity.