Video animation of an incredibly complex landing on Mars

[American Horse]

The folks at NASA/JPL posted this amazing video to their YouTube channel today, highlighting the incredible engineering feat it will be to land the Curiosity Rover onto the surface of Mars. Because of Curiosity’s weight and size, the traditional “airbag” method isn’t going to cut it.

Instead, Curiosity will be lowered gently to the surface of Mars via a rocket-propelled “skycrane”. It makes the landing even more complex and dangerous, and introduces a whole new level of risk into the landing. But once we get that SUV-sized rover crawling around the surface of Mars, all that risk will be totally worth it.


Inspiring Video: The Challenge of Landing [Curiosity] on Mars

[SFC Ollie]

So when did you say you were leaving?

[American Horse]

I've already made it to Mars.
Take a look at the picture below.
My name is on that disc, and if I'm not mistaken my location on earth is part of the record; It contains the full membership of the Planetary Society at that time, as recorded from the membership catalog of names, and those names were listed with full name and addresses.

 

NASA / JPL / U. Arizona
Visions of Mars, on Mars
This image shows the DVD provided by The Planetary Society to the Phoenix mission, which contains 250,000 names of people who signed up to send their names to Mars. It also contains "Visions of Mars," messages to future Martian explorers, science fiction stories and art inspired by the Red Planet. The DVD is mounted on the deck of the lander, which sits about one meter above the Martian surface, visible in the background.

[American Horse]

More on the name on Mars, Pluto, Saturn, the Moon and below.

watch the video

Messages from Earth - YouTube

Messages from Earth - YouTube