NASA "Curiosity Rover" due to land on Mars tomorrow

[Manky Monkey]

Just perusing the BBC News online, I see the Mars probe's due to land in a crater on the "Red Planet" at 6.30 tomorrow morning.
I don't usually follow this kind of thing, but will make a point of looking to the heavens when I get to work at 6.30.
The craft's spent the past eight months travelling from Earth to Mars, covering more than 560 million km. It's first job, in typical tourist fashion, will be to take a photo of itself on the planet's surface & send it back to Earth.
Apparently the Americans have already landed not one but six probes on the planet's surface. They say the latest is equipped with the most sophisticated science payload "ever sent to another world" -"other Worlds"! It was only a couple of hundred years ago that we didn't know what was on the other side of our own planet.
Don't know about you, but it just blows me away that we bunch of neanderthals have developed enough to be able to do that.
I have trouble finding my way to the next village.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19132121#

[digger06]

technology is developing at an alarmingly fast pace, makes you wonder where it all comes from

[hunter]

I could have saved them millions,
They could have droped me there on a trike,
With a HD camera,Battery drill and a couple of jam-jars.
And a couple of hundred gallons of petrol

[hornet6]

The BBC2 programme, horizon, did a special on it last week.....quite amazing actually

[Manky Monkey]

"I could have saved them millions,
They could have droped me there on a trike,
With a HD camera,Battery drill and a couple of jam-jars.
And a couple of hundred gallons of petrol" 

-& an 8 month supply of beer & biscuits.

[hunter]

Tea and Jaffa cakes.

[ROD]

Ha! Just come on here to post about this! Amazing stuff,overshadowed by the Olympics!

[Cabman77]

I saw the Horizon programme the other day. The landing procedure is the wackiest I`ve ever heard of, it involves blowing itself apart or something. Gobsmacked me.

[hornet6]

As the pod that holds the rover hurtles through the mars atmosphere,a parachute is deployed to slow it down.Still going to fast at around 1000 meters from the surface,booster rockets slow it down even more until at about 60 feet from the surface,the rover is lowered down by a crane inside the  pod. Its never been done before...so it could all go wrong in the last few seconds. The rover is quite large as well....packed with delicate instruments

[Manky Monkey]

Well, they made it.
Launched from nearly 350 million miles away, the "Curiosty Rover" made a perfect landing within a 1 1/2 mile square target zone. How cool is that.
NASA was even able to take photographs of it descending to the planet's surface by parachute, using satellite imaging.
Powered by Plutonium, the craft could carry on transmitting data for 20 or 30 years.
The Americans have predicted that they'll be able to put men "within the vicinity" of Mars by 2030 -which means they could very well rediscover the Rover, still trundling around the planet.
Every advance in technology fuels further advances which might've appeared impossible just a few years before. Personal communicators were only carried by the crew of the Starship Enterprise when I was a teenager. Now every kid over the age of 5 has their own mobile phone & can speak to anyone, anywhere on the planet, at the touch of a button.
Star Trek was set in the 23rd century. 200 years away. At this rate, it could be science fact long before then.