Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory hug each other after hearing of the Curiosity rover’s successful landing on Mars on Sunday night.
The spacecraft plunged through Mars’ atmosphere, fired up a rocket-powered platform and lowered the car-sized, 1-ton Curiosity rover to its landing spot in 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater. Then the platform flew off to its own crash landing, while Curiosity sent out a text message basically saying, “I made it!”
That message was relayed by the orbiting Mars Odyssey satellite back to
A thumbnail, fisheye view from one of the hazard avoidance cameras on NASA’s Curiosity rover shows Martian soil and parts of the spacecraft itself.
Earth. A radio telescope in Australia picked up the message and sent it here to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. When the blips of data appeared on the screens at JPL’s mission control, the room erupted in cheers and hugs.
Because of the light-travel time between Mars and Earth, throngs of scientists and engineers — along with millions who were monitoring the action via television and the Internet — celebrated Curiosity’s landing 14 minutes after it actually occurred.
- More here: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/mars/curiosity_news3.html
- http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/story/2012-08-06/mars-rover-curiosity-landing/56814732/1?csp=fbfanpage
- Watch here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html
- Read here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48511087/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.UB9cKE2uaf5
Millions watched on http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html as Curiosity landed on Mars.
John Featherstone
Marshall Foster- World History Institute
Jennifer Featherstone
