Here at Like that Idea we have spent quite a bit of time talking about Web content management systems, with one of our favorites being Drupal. You may have wondered who actually uses these open source applications and how good could something you download for free really be? Dries Buytaert, the project leader for Drupal, pointed out on is blog that:

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is using Drupal for their Academy of Program / Project and Engineering Leadership website (APPEL). Sweet!

Some well known (and not so well known ) Drupal sites also includes: American Idol’s Blog, Mac Geekery, Nashville News, Ringo Starr, Anthropology.net, Fish Fever, and Empire Investor. Ok, to be fair, Empire Investor is a site we did for a client…but if the site’s owner is happy with Drupal why wouldn’t you be happy with the CMS? If you want more examples of Drupal sites, check out DrupalSites.net and Drupal Showcase.

In case you missed it, the Mars Rovers are celebrating their second anniversary (in Earth years) on Mars. Spirit’s landing on Mars was on January 3, 2004 and Opportunity’s landing was on January 24th that same year. Pretty amazing, considering that the original mission was expected to only last three months and was on a cheap budget (relative to NASA’s budget).

I haven’t seen too much about the anniversary on NASA’s official site, but maybe they will post something today. Space.com on the other hand has a nice article they put out, titled The Rovers That Just Won’t Stop:

One of the things that helped prolong the lives of the rovers was the repeated removal of the dust that gathered on the solar panels of each of the robots. Occasional wind events cleared dust from the wing-like panels, thereby increasing the amount of energy yielded by the solar collectors to power the robots.