On February 18th this year, cheers erupted around the world while viewers watched Nasaâs Perseverance robot land on Mars. It was the 10th-ever landing on the red planet, which began with the Soviet Union in 1971. Though located 300 million miles and a seven-month journey from earth, the planet has an interesting Irish link.
One of the planetsâ moons â Deimos â has an abyss called Swift Crater, in memory of the ramblings of Lemuel Gulliver, the pseudonym used by Jonathan Swift in his 1726 masterpiece, Gulliverâs Travels. The noted Irish satirist and poet, who became dean of Saint Patrickâs Cathedral in Dublin, wrote the bulk of the tome at Woodbrook House in Co Laois. In his withering dissection of human folly he asserted that Mars had two moons, a fact that was not proven until 150 years later.