Curiosity? Nasa?! MARTIANS!!

[Bells]

Curiosity Closes in on its New 'Home'
Sat, 04 Aug 2012 08:20:24 PM GMT-0300

With Mars looming ever larger in front of it, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft and its Curiosity rover are in the final stages of preparing for entry, descent and landing on the Red Planet at 10:31 p.m. PDT Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6). Curiosity remains in good health with all systems operating as expected. Today, the flight team uplinked and confirmed commands to make minor corrections to the spacecraft's navigation reference point parameters. This afternoon, as part of the onboard sequence of autonomous activities leading to the landing, catalyst bed heaters are being turned on to prepare the eight Mars Lander Engines that are part of MSL's descent propulsion system. As of 2:25 p.m. PDT (5:25 p.m. EDT), MSL was approximately 261,000 miles (420,039 kilometers) from Mars, closing in at a little more than 8,000 mph (about 3,600 meters per second).

I love how Nasa calls the final landing procedure the "7 Minutes of Terror"


So yeah! pretty exciting stuff, the best we have right now is about to land on mars and on the upcoming months we could learn a lot about nothing or nothing about a lot!

As of this post we're 3 hours away from the landing and about a first a week away from the first results, this is somewhat akin of landing on the moon actually, which is pretty cool. Except is not (yet) putting people up there.

But hey, maybe in our lifetime?