Live Coverage of the Curiosity Mars Landing

[davekill]

Join Fraser, Pamela and Phil of the astronomy cast for 4 hours of non-stop coverage leading up to the landing, with special guest, and on location reporting at JPL.

Sun Aug 5th, 8 pm pacific time, 11pm eastern, 3 am universal.
Join them on Google+ or Youtube.com/universetoday


It’s 4 Days to Mars – and NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Lab (MSL) spacecraft is now flying under the control of the crafts autonomous entry, descent and landing timeline and picking up speed as she plunges ever faster to the Red Planet and her Rendezvous with Destiny.

“Timeline activated. Bleep-bop. I’m running entry, descent & landing flight software all on my own. Countdown to Mars: 5 days,” Curiosity tweeted Tuesday night.

the excitement is building rapidly for NASA’s biggest, boldest mission ever to the Red Planet as the flight team continues to monitor Curiosity’s onboard systems and flight trajectory. Yesterday, the flight team successfully carried out a memory test on the software for the mechanical assembly that controls MSL’s descent motor, configured the spacecraft for its transition to entry, descent and landing approach mode, and they enabled the spacecraft’s hardware pyrotechnic devices


Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/96556/4-days-to-mars-curiosity-activates-entry-descent-and-landing-timeline-edl-infographic/#ixzz22Ldna3Bv

[turtlesrock]

very exciting! hang on, we're going to mars, baby!

[davekill]

The eve of NASA's MSL 'Curiosity' landing is a good time to open Google Earth and in the toolbar switch to Google Mars!

On the left side layers panel under 'Mars Gallery' are two guided tours.
'An introduction to Mars' by Ira Flatow, and 'Mars Exploration' by Bill Nye.

With only hours to go now - Good luck Curiosity!

Not only will the space capsule be aerobraking like previous landings, this time it will be 'flying' to it's destination by changing it's center of mass and using the heat shields lift capability during hypersonic flight like a wing.

Four minutes of surfing and it re-centers it's mass, pops the chute at mach 2, then  gently lowers the one ton nuclear powered rover with a rocket sky crane

Wile E. Coyote couldn't have come up with a better plan.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I watched their landing plan and thought "these guys are insane".

Congratulations to NASA for a successful landing.

[davekill]

I had the NASA live feed, Universe-today and the NASA 'Eyes On The Solar System' running in real time.

Pretty cool to see the first photos on the ground come in so fast. Didn't expect that.

Big congratulations - what a moral boost.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9454930/Nasa-Mars-Landing-live-blog.html

[Rico]

So frakking cool!

First pictures from Mars rover Curiosity

[Bromptonboy]

Such amazing news.  2 weeks until all the diagnostics are completed, and they actually starting doing stuff. 

[Bryancd]

What an amazing feat of engineering that landing was!

[moyer777]

I loved it!  Stayed up till the early morning just to watch the press conference and savor the moments.  It really is amazing how this was all done.  Way, way cool.

[davekill]

Another great photo, this time from the orbiter,

According to Sarah Milkovich, science systems engineer for Curiosity & MRO HiRISE, "this image was taken 6 minutes after MSL entered the atmosphere":

"You can see the lines on the parachute, you can see the hole in the top there," explains Milkovich. The inset image in the picture featured here "has been stretched differently so that you can see the parachute clearly without saturation... HiRISE has taken over 120 pictures of Gale [in preparation for Curiosity's arrival] but I really think this is the coolest one."

[Bryancd]

I saw that over on JPL's web site, so cool! Can't wait for more images and video of the actual descent!

[moyer777]

I'm really looking forward to that Bryan!

[Rico]

I know these are a bit blurry, but wow!  Worth the trip to see these images from Mars!   

[Bryancd]

Ta da!

http://youtu.be/UcGMDXy-Y1I

[Rico]

AWESOME!!!