Sunday 5 August 2012

Touchdown! Curiosity lands safely on Mars


NASA's Mars lander Curiosity has landed safely on Mars. After a 253-day voyage punctuated by a dramatic plunge through the Martian atmosphere, the nuclear-powered rover has reported to mission control that it is on the ground and systems are nominal. The landing occurred at 10:31 p.m. U.S. PDT (August 6, 05:31 GMT) plus or minus a minute. The landing site was near the base of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater, 4.6 degrees south latitude, 137.4 degrees east longitude. This marks the beginning of a two-year mission to seek out places where life may have existed on Mars – or may yet exist today. Read More

1 comment:

Chris Lopes said...

Watched it live (or as live as a human from 150 million miles away can) and it was pretty damn cool. The Rube Goldberg landing had me a bit worried at first (there were just too many places for Murphy to show up, and I'm still amazed he missed the party), but when the team at JPL celebrated, so did I. It was a great flight and your article covered it well.