'Curiosity' Mars Rover Landing

[Things]

Hey guys, well, less than 3 hours to go until they attempt the landing of this $2.4billion dollar project.

The latest from NASA:

Its approximately 352 million mile (567 million kilometer), 36-week journey from Earth nearly complete, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft and its Curiosity rover are "all systems go" for touchdown in Mars' Gale Crater tonight at 10:31 p.m. PDT (1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6). This morning, flight controllers decided to forgo the sixth and final opportunity on the mission calendar for a course-correction maneuver. The spacecraft is headed for its target entry point at the top of Mars' atmosphere precisely enough that the maneuver was deemed unnecessary. In addition, this afternoon, mission controllers determined that no further updates are necessary to the onboard information the spacecraft will use during its autonomous control of MSL's entry, descent and landing. Parameters on a motion tracker were adjusted Saturday for fine-tuning determination of the spacecraft's orientation during its descent.



As of 6:18 p.m. PDT (9:18 p.m. EDT), MSL was approximately 36,000 miles (57,936 kilometers) from Mars, traveling at a speed of about 8,400 mph (about 3,755 meters per second).

Some videos if you don't know what this is by now:







It will be live streaming at about 3:31pm AEST (GMT+10) this afternoon, in standard def here: Curiosity Cam, Ustream.TV: UPCOMING EVENTS: Sunday, Aug. 5 NASA Mars Rover Update 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. PDT NASA Science News Conference Mars Science Labor...

And HD: NASA JPL Live, Ustream.TV: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory invites you to watch live and chat about everything from Mars rovers to monitoring asteroids to...

You can track it's current position and ETA here: NASA - Where is Curiosity?

Cool stuff, hope it works!

 

[T_Warne]

I am so excited!!! I hope that everything goes as planned. This whole sky crane thing sounds insane. I hope Curiosity doesn't just wind up another crater on Mars...

 

[jeffreythe00]

Alien rocks are SO cool and exciting!

 

[sinner]

Yeah i am so much excited about it i decided to go to work late today :na: they say its a very good chance that it goes well but anything could happen depending on brutal environment the landing in such a short distance <7Km can be somehow 50/50 chance.. Is that true!

 

[lowell389]

I have been waiting to see something on the news about how this works out , and wouldn't ya know it, this is when my tv decided to take a crap! I guess I'll have to try the radio. And call my neighbor to see if he hears how the landing goes.

 

[n2stuff]

Thanks for links. I am watching the live feeds now. I hope it makes it!!!

 

[ARG]

IT LANDED! The cheering nearly busted my speakers

 

[Dr_Evil]

Pictures have been sent back. Nothing too exciting yet though.

 

[T_Warne]

Ohhh YeeeaaaAAAHHH!!! Fuckin' awesome!!!

 

[lowell389]

Verry cool, It will be interesting to see what it finds there.

 

[T_Warne]

I hope they make raw feeds of the visual data available online.

 

[Encap]

Awesome accomplishment really!

Nice to see something like that work out correctly after 10 years of work to make it happen.

Seeing the first images come back was a thrill of sorts-- worth being up to see it happen

 

[Things]

I got lucky with it happening around 3:40pm

Friggin crazy shit, still in shock they managed to pull it off. So many minor little details that just have to be perfect to prevent it becoming just another crater on mars.

 

[sinner]

Just epic!

 

[Dr_Evil]

The sky crane flyaway image in the previous post reminds me of this. lol

 

[Things]

Yeah, poor thing was locked inside the outer shell, comes out to drop the rover off, then flies off to crash on the surface of mars. Bit of a waste!