Watch NASA's live coverage of Mars rover landing (Cnet)

Cnet ^ | 8/6/2012 | Cnet

[Dallas59]

Video Linky Here

[bigtoona]

A nuclear powered car at that!

[hillarys cankles]

I saw the video of what needed to happen for Curiosity to land and I thought “no way”. So many things had to go right for it to land and that it is on mars sending pictures already is such a testament of the men and women at JPL and all the other companies that helped this happen. WOW!

[FlingWingFlyer]

I know. This is truly amazing. I’m glad I decided to watch it on NASA TV. Big Screen. Those folks are going crazy. Everything worked to perfection including Odessey’s flyover. Simply amazing.

[jennychase]

CONGRATS !!!
Amazing

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks...for the post....damn amazing!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From NASA:

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MSL Landing Updates

Curiosity Lands on Mars

08/05/2012 10:32 PM

NASA's Curiosity rover has landed on Mars! Its descent-stage retrorockets fired, guiding it to the surface. Nylon cords lowered the rover to the ground in the "sky crane" maneuver. When the spacecraft sensed touchdown, the connecting cords were severed, and the descent stage flew out of the way. The time of day at the landing site is mid-afternoon -- about 3 p.m. local Mars time at Gale Crater. The time at JPL's mission control is about 10:31 p.m. Aug. 5 PDT (early morning EDT).

Parachute Pops Open

08/05/2012 10:29 PM

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Adding some more detail:

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But first, Curiosity has to survive its landing. Much larger than earlier Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity -- the 1-ton machine is roughly the size of a very small car -- Curiosity posed a significant challenge to the engineers tasked with getting it down through the Martian atmosphere and onto the soil of the Red Planet.

[Carry_Okie]

the 1-ton machine is roughly the size of a very small car -- Curiosity posed a significant challenge to the engineers tasked with getting it down through the Martian atmosphere and onto the soil of the Red Planet.

Not to quibble, but the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) for the Apollo missions to the moon weighed over 5 tons. Although there was no atmosphere through which to penetrate and the gravity was less, the LEM did have to return into orbit.

I don't know much about the Reynolds' numbers for the Martian atmosphere, but I found the design a bit over-complicated. One would think a glider for the final phase, completing a flare out and stall on the landing would have been easier to do than the rocket powered "sky hook," but I have little doubt that such a system was considered and and rejected in favor of this one.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

And a bit more from the CNET link,....see above:

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The science instruments carried by Curiosity will be looking for, among other things, carbon compounds and signs of whether Mars is, or ever might have been, habitable. The rover's uphill climb will take it through eons of Mars' geological evolution.

"The really cool thing about the Gale stratigraphic succession to me is it's a tour through nearly the entire history of Mars, where we can begin to understand these major changes in the environmental history of the planet," project scientist John Grotzinger said in an interview with CNET.

[Marine_Uncle]

Nice engineering feat.