One week from today.... Curiosity and the 7 Minutes of Terror!!! Sounds like an awesome band name. But nope, it's the latest Mars Science Laboratory that is approaching the atmosphere of Mars right now.
This will mark our civilization's most ambitious, most daring, and most complicated space mission ever. It just blows my mind that we are able to attempt this feat well over 100 million miles from Earth.
Watch, and be amazed...
Explanation: Next week at this time, there may be an amazing new robotic explorer on Mars. Or there may be a new pile of junk. It all likely depends on many things going correctly in the minutes after the Mars Science Laboratory mission arrives at Mars and attempts to deploy the Curiosity rover from orbit. Arguably the most sophisticated landing yet attempted on the red planet, consecutive precision events will involve a heat shield, a parachute, several rocket maneuvers, and the automatic operation of an unusual device called a Sky Crane. These "Seven Minutes of Terror" -- depicted in the above dramatic video -- will begin on Monday, August 6 at about 5:24 am Universal time, which occurs on Sunday night, August 5 for western North Americans. If successful, the car-sized Curiosity rover will rest on the surface of Mars, soon to begin exploring Gale Crater to better determine the habitability of this seemingly barren world to life -- past, present, and future. Although multiple media outlets may cover this event, one way to watch these landing events unfold is on the NASA channel live on the web.
Watch the NASA channel here:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html