With the number of probes, landers and orbiters buzzing around Mars these days, the red planet's airspace is starting to resemble peak season over Dubai.
For the past month, the media has been alive with news about Mars. Europe's Britpop-powered Beagle 2 spacecraft disappeared, its orbiter is now mapping the entire planet, and the United States landed two probes to explore Mars for signs of life and send back images almost in real-time.
And as US President George W. Bush seizes the moment to claim his place in space history, many of us are getting dizzy with deja vu.
America's interest in space is often credited to an idealistic former president, John F. Kennedy, who famously announced, 'We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.'
In fact, it took the furious competition of the cold war to drag the US into the space race. America chose to go to the moon because it was afraid the Russians would get there first.
When the former Soviet Union launched its first Sputnik in 1957, the US responded by throwing massive resources into a largely unsuccessful game of catch-up. But the Russians were not satisfied with getting a satellite up there - they wanted more. Within five years, they became the first to put a man in space, the first to land a probe on the moon and, before Mr Kennedy even entered the White House, they had already set their sights on Mars.
Mr Kennedy's speech was one of the most inspiring in the history of space exploration, but its subtext was clear: only one power was fit to rule in space.
