Mars Curiosity landing: Sunday, 5 August 2012

[Palle]

Hey all, this is just a reminder that you wll be able to watch the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html)rover Curiosity live on Sunday, 5 August starting at 2231 PDT. Nasa TV and Ustream will be providing the live feeds, both raw and with commentary. There will also be an attempt to use the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (http://www.universetoday.com/96576/hirise-camera-to-attempt-imaging-curiositys-descent-to-mars/)to photograph the landing as well.

Missing out on this milestone in human endeavor is not recommended.

:nerd:

[Outrider]

I will set a reminder on my phone. This is very, very cool.

[CelestialBlade]

Oh awesome, thank you. Totally watching.

[Neirene]

The curiosity is maybe one of the most important missions to the red planet to date! the rover is actually capable of do almost anything from mining rocks, analizing them, look for microbial life, cameras everywhere and so on we may have the posibility to see the red planet like never before （・ｘｌ

I just hope everything goes fine as they want to land the rover with those new crane system that havent been tested before!

Im definitely watching it I love astromy very very much!

[Dhylec]

I'll have to try to remember watching this.

[Ghost Inside]

I really don't keep track of cool science stuff nowadays at all! Thanks for the heads up!

[SpikeOtacon]

Will watch while I mine planets for their goodies in X3 on the other computer. Very excited!

[Akaimizu]

I am SO on this. Hurray for advancement of mankind!

[Blackheart521]

Very cool but I find it funny and fitting that the guy with the EVE Online Sig posted this. ^^

[Akaimizu]

Yep. Though I loved the interview saying that transmissions from Mars will take at least 14 minutes. I had to laugh because it reminded me of an episode of SeaLab 2021, where they had this running joke about how long it took for someone to hear what the other person was saying due to one of them being on the moon. So when someone walked away from the computer, there was this long delay and then the other person said, "Hey! Don't walk away!"

[Retehi]

This is why humanity is awesome. :) Wouldn't miss it for the world.

[Outrider]

We did it. This is amazing. (Ha ha! Somebody just shouted "Holy shit!" on the life feed.)

Congrats to NASA. Can't wait to see what Curiosity finds.

[Ghost Inside]

Bah... Frikken missed it! By 20 minutes! :(

[CelestialBlade]

Happened too late for me to watch, but saw the good news this morning! This is awesome :D

[Palle]

When my grandfather was a child, if you needed to travel to London you took a steamship, and the trip lasted a week or so. Today my grandfather will watch the news to see what we have done with MSL. To think that in one man's lifetime we have made such progress blows my mind.

It was great to watch, all kinds of exciting little moments chipping away at the tension as we got closer and closer. There were still almost 30k viewers on the feed at 0100 when it closed down, but I'm not sure on peak viewers. We did crash NASA's website briefly, though. :>

What a great success for all the teams involved up to now, and great opportunity for those who are 'taking the keys'.

[Akaimizu]

Yep it was pretty cool. Glad the thing was successful with only a 1/3rd chance of success. This time, fortunately all those possible chaotic forces against the calculations didn't happen. That 14 minute transmission delay is a beast, but so far a perfect landing.

We'll have to still see if all the measurement instruments still function, but we wont have the answer to that for a little while. However, the cameras are up. This is another chance for mankind to get a little smarter in the science of what's off our planet.

[Polly]

Really happy it succeeded. It'd have looked TERRIBLE on NASA had it not worked, given the failings with Mars endeavors in the past.

[Outrider]

It was great to watch, all kinds of exciting little moments chipping away at the tension as we got closer and closer. There were still almost 30k viewers on the feed at 0100 when it closed down, but I'm not sure on peak viewers. We did crash NASA's website briefly, though. :>

Right around the "seven minutes of hell", I saw that it was up to 250k viewers.