The NASA Curiosity Rover on Mars

Curiosity will touch down around 8:30pm August 5, PST. The robot is the size of a small car and carries a nuclear power supply and the most comprehensive set of scientific instruments ever put on a rover. Because of its relatively large weight, it can't just bounce around on airbags like previous Mars rovers. Instead, a hovering descent stage will lower the robot to the ground using a cable, a technique that's never been used before.

First of all, we're going to be getting new images and data from the surface of a planet other than Earth. This is exiting no matter what else is happening or how many times we've done it already.

On top of that, NASA is going to stream the landing on their website. Barring technical problems and time-zone issues, you can go and watch the robot hit the Martian dirt in real time (well, kinda, there's obviously going to be a delay).

Personally, I'm really pumped for this. The idea of watching an event live from another planet (almost) as it's happening hundreds of millions of miles away is just so cool. It makes you think about just how involved the average person could be if (hopefully, when) space exploration takes off again, what with our society of nearly-ubiquitous broadband internet, smartphones, easy live-streaming and social networking sites.

edited 2nd Aug '12 6:31:10 AM by Gaunt88

Me too. This promises to be definitely interesting. And of course, there is the very serious possibility that this will be the mission that will discover microbial extraterrestrial life, which would be awesome beyond belief.

Mars has a habit of eating robots. Let us not count our chickens til this one sends telemetry from the surface.

Sad but true. Though at least one of those was human error rather than anything to do with Mars itself.

Gonna DVR it, on vacation in Pennsylvania w/ my parents.

Very interesting..

As mentioned, the landing is going to be pretty perilous. If we can snag the landing ok, we have some serious stuff to gain.

I wanna see this. So, would 9:30 PST be 5:30 GMT?

edited 5th Aug '12 7:55:09 AM by TheBatPencil

Here's a countdown clock: http://freethoughtblogs.com/zingularity/2012/08/04/more-on-curiosity/

It'll be early in the morning where I live too. Arghhh.

It's about 7:30 AM where I am. Pretty convenient.

I had actually misread the time, and thought I had to stay awake this night to catch it; but in this way, I can simply wake up as usual and simply wait for it.

It's going to be about 3:30 PM where I am, which is great. I was expecting t have to get up midnight or something as well.

It's almost time! I'm watching for it on this livestream.

I'm watching this one.

Switching over to that one, looks more interesting ATM.

edited 5th Aug '12 9:25:43 PM by BestOf

Watching it now as well.

Gotta love the guy who's job is to translate mission-control-jargon to slightly more comprehensible terms

edited 5th Aug '12 10:17:08 PM by Gaunt88

I'm back to the stream I was using originally.

This is wondrous.

What's with the dude with the shitty faux-hawk?

That dude is ballin'!

I noticed that. I'm surprised that's not against some NASA reg

Did they mention what brand their "lucky" peanuts are? That'd be one hell of an endorsement.

edited 5th Aug '12 10:22:51 PM by Gaunt88

Also, if you look closely, that dude has stars on his hair on the side of his head.

Guess they don't have any sort of professional appearance guidelines.

Why would they?

I'm watching, but I don't really have any idea what's going on. I expect I'll know if it's important.

Science at its most dramatic.

And she's down!

TOUCHDOWN!

TOUCHDOWN!