Curiosity has landed!
By Bora Zivkovic
This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Video of the Week #55 August 10th, 2012:
From:NASA Lands Car-Sized Rover Near Martian Mountain by Joanne Manaster at PsiVid.
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Source:NASA
This week, NASA’s team of engineers in charge of landing Mars Rover Curiosity, accomplished the grand feat of landing the largest rover ever built onto Mars using a novel engineering concept called the sky crane, a contraption with rockets to slow down the descent and landing of the rover on the surface of Mars. A 14 minute signal delay from Mars to Earth meant there would be several minutes of tense nail biting, so to speak, before engineers learned if the device was effective in landing Curiosity safely or not. This video of the control room scene during these tense few minutes captures the watchful waiting and culminates in celebration.
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