[hattend]

Good Luck, Curiosity! Wonder if it will be on Network TV as I only have basic cable.

[JRandomFreeper]

Does anyone know the lat/long of the center of the landing ellipse?

/johnny

[SamAdams76]

Hopefully this is a successful mission to Mars that will lead to a manned landing someday, or at the least, a canine landing.

Back in 1957 or thereabouts, when Eisenhower was president and Elvis Presley was still hip and not yet the washed up caricature of himself he would later become, the Russians went ahead and sent a puppy dog up into space.

I believe Laika the Space Dog was the name of this pup and this canine became a national hero (in the old Soviet Union) inspiring a myriad of postage stamps and monuments that are even today still scattered across that very large landmass, populated by vodka-drinking peoples.

Well a canine mission to Mars would certainly add a lot of excitement to a mission like this. I know they are doing something rather spectacular today with this landing but let's face it, most people aren't paying attention - or even aware that we are landing a spacecraft on Mars today.

In order to gin up the human interest factor, you have to put some flesh and bones into that spacecraft and while it is perhaps a bit too risky for humans to journey to Mars at this time, let's make it a dog.

Imagine having our very own space-dog, prancing about on the surface of Mars? That would get a lot of people, especially women, interested in the mission.

[brityank]

Good Luck, Curiosity! Wonder if it will be on Network TV as I only have basic cable.

Agree, great good luck indeed!

Here's the direct link for NASA's Streaming TV for your PC. They also have links on the right allowing streaming for iOS and Android - so no one gets left out!       ;^)

[kitkat]

Mars - save

[Portcall24]

Once it’s on the ground I hope they keep Howard Wolfowitz away from the controls.

[Biggirl]

Best wishes to the Mars Rover Curiosity!

[Doogle]

"everything named "Rover" should be on Mars"

[tennmountainman]

You can watch it via NasaTv or ustream.com on the web.
There are probably many more links. Those are the ones I know.

[Sidebar Moderator]

Bumped to breaking news!

[djf]

T minus 4 hours and counting...

[Chesterbelloc]

If you go to this NASA web site you can get a web app that lets you follow the progress of the Curiosity Rover:

http://eyes.nasa.gov/index.html

It has a live mode where you can see all the current stats (speed, distance, altitude) and also a preview mode where you can see what hopefully will happen later tonight.

Earth Occultation is supposed to occur roughly a minute and 59 seconds before touchdown. As best I can tell it looks like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be close to right overhead. It’d be neat if it really is able to film the landing.

[yield 2 the right]

No matter what happens, It will be better than “John Carter”.

[stbdside]

T minus 2 hours and 55 minutes to landing.

[stbdside]

T minus 2 hours and 55 minutes to landing.

[onedoug]

‘Might try to stay up till 11 out here, hoping they might confirm.

Thanks for the thread, h.

[lwoodham]

If this thing bounces off Mars atmosphere and gets slingshot out into the void, then in about 200 years expect someone to detect an omnipotent signal coming from some space cloud alled Curio City.

[Unmarked Package]

Found this at Space.com:

Curiosity Has a Laser (Pew, pew, pew!)

For sheer coolness, it's tough to beat ChemCam. This instrument will fire a laser at Martian rocks from up to 30 feet (9 meters) away and analyze the composition of the vaporized bits.

ChemCam will thus enable Curiosity to study rocks that are out of reach of its flexible robotic arm. It will also help the mission team determine from afar whether or not they want to send the rover over to investigate a particular landform.

ChemCam is composed of several different parts. The laser sits on Curiosity's mast, along with a camera and a small telescope. Three spectrographs sit in the rover's body, connected to the mast components by fiber optics. The spectrographs will analyze the light emitted by excited electrons in the vaporized rock samples.

Read more about the other instruments onboard Curiosity at Space.com

[chessplayer]

This is definitely not good for the nerves.

[Blado]

This Just In
____________

Comrade President Imam Obama has just ordered NASA to program the rover Curiosity, immediately upon landing on Mars, perform a gay wedding ceremony for the long suffering rovers Spirit and Opportunity!

[PA Engineer]

10 minutes to cruise stage separation. JM2¢