[Balding_Eagle]

I honestly didn’t think NASA could pull it off anymore. I’m so pleased to be wrong.

[eddie willers]

I honestly didn’t think NASA could pull it off anymore.

I didn't think it would be able to pull off the Sky Crane, powered fight part.

Happy to say...."I was wrong"!

[kingu]

JPL’s known for some pretty hair brained ideas, that have a tenancy to not only be thinking outside the box, but actually work as well. Am I surprised that the skycrane worked? No. Or the parachute? No.

Am I dumbfounded in awe at being able to hit the all time smallest bullseye? Absolutely. Yeah, the rest of the stuff was cool, relaying stuff through satellites, taking pictures of Curiosity after parachute deployment - all pretty nifty. But even hurling a smart bullet to hit their injection window of just a few miles across while travelling over 12,000 miles an hour? That's over 3 miles a second.

Miss that, it doesn't matter what whizbang stuff you've got stowed away, it will be doing a bang up impression of the Beagle.

Now, if only they could get that stupid NASA sign off of my Caltech/JPL.

[Moonman62]

I honestly didn’t think NASA could pull it off anymore. I’m so pleased to be wrong.

Politicians tend to stay away from the unmanned programs which is my theory for why they do so well.

[af_vet_rr]

I honestly didn’t think NASA could pull it off anymore. I’m so pleased to be wrong.

NASA has been pretty successful when it comes to Mars over the past few projects. And I note that they just awarded SpaceX the contract to haul people/cargo the Space Station, freeing up NASA resources for more important things.

There are some incredibly talented people there. It's a shame the libs are doing everything they can to kill off exploration. Wouldn't want to inspire kids or make the USA look good or anything.