Who's watching the Mars landing?

[SubaruBrat]

Coming up soon!

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

[GameGavel]

Watching!

[GameGavel]

Now that was some riveting video! Good stuff!

[SubaruBrat]

It appears that it went perfectly. The entry and landing phases look like they went as planned. I am sure you have all seen the animations, come in on a heat shield, slow down with a parachute, and then the decent stage brought it down to the surface under powered flight before landing the rover then flying away. There is still allot of work remaining to asses the state of health and checkout, a few weeks worth, and quite a few complications are still possible but this really looks like a good landing and that is a great start.

Listening to their loop it sounds more and more like a very solid landing. At touchdown there was very little drift in any direction and the vertical velocity was very close to zero so it was full stop gentle landing with no slamming in at an angle or dragging. The tether release must have gone perfectly followed by flyaway of the decent stage because they called no faults. Allot of the numbers you heard them calling out were EPS (electrical) state of health. And what was said is that he battery had a good state of charge, current draw as nominal, and bus voltage was nominal. I didn't hear them call any faults or out of limits telem so it is likely that it landed in perfect condition. Lots of work to verify all that but no red flags so far.

[Leathco]

Cool, glad to hear the probe landed well. I'd still love to see a manned Mars mission before I die.

[focusrs]

Was way cool, love this stuff. I still have a model of the Pathfinder on my desk

[Burgertime]

I really wanted to watch it live, but I ended up having to work last night.

[Jammajup]

I have been watching this too with great interest,i was amazed with the fact a cradle or crane drops from a probe and then hovers while it lowers a massive rover to the surface-amazing!.Easily the best mars mission yet but what i want is to hear the planet with a rover microphone such as the light wind that would be cool,there was a probe launched some years back (may of been beagle or something) that had a microphone but the mission failed.

[All Your Base]

If only Curiosity had landed on a Martian cat.

(think about it...)

[SubaruBrat]

This takes a few steps but is worth it, sort of.

1. Download the Falling Skies game onto your iPhone/pad (maybe droid as well?)

2. Bring up a picture of Curiosity or any other martian landscape.

3. Point the game at the picture and watch aliens appear around Curiosity.