Thread: Curiosity Rover Landing in Approximately 12 Hours

The Curiosity Mars rover is going to be landing in less than half a day. This is the largest, most capable rover ever sent to the planet of the surface, by far. It's a pretty fantastic machine, and will take about seven minutes to go through the steps of landing. If everything goes well, it expected to spend at least 687 days, which is one Martian year, studying the planet, and the area it will land in. The entire landing process is fascinating (there will be a sky crane), the machine is fascinating (and the size of a mini coop), and the amount of information we'll be able to gain about the planet will hopefully be fascinating.

This is all assuming that it's able to land without any problems.

If you have no idea what the Curiosity is, here are some links that can help fill you in:
NASA - Mars Science Laboratory, the Next Mars Rover
Mars Science Laboratory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's a stream of the coverage for the event, will be running all through the night: Curiosity Cam, Ustream.TV: UPCOMING EVENTS: Sunday, Aug. 5 NASA Mars Rover Update 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. PDT NASA Science News Conference Mars Science Labor...
It will be a stream at least, to the best of my understanding, as we get close. Right now, it's just a video about the actual landing process. If it doesn't pick up, I assume your best bet is still NASA's site.

If you have an Xbox 360, you can watch the landing through that, it should be on your dashboard.

If you live in New York, am I incredible envious: Times Square will have a giant screen doing coverage of the landing starting at 11:30PM eastern running until 4AM.

Get excited people!