August 16, 2005

A Big Mac cost $3.06 that summer of 2005, and the Dow Jones sat at 10,718 — the Bush administration was navigating an increasingly complicated war in Iraq while managing diplomatic tensions at the United Nations. On the radio, Mariah Carey's "We Belong Together" held the top spot for weeks, and in living rooms across the country, audiences were tuning in to "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," the most-watched show on television. On August 12, NASA launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter from Cape Canaveral, sending a spacecraft toward Mars equipped to map the planet's surface in greater detail than any mission before it.