Curiosity will attempt to land on Mars – in a daring and unprecedented series of steps involving pyrotechnics, a parachute, and a skycrane to give the rover a soft landing on Mars’ surface – at 10:31 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on August 5 (5:31 UTC on August 6, 2012).
After NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover arrives at the top of Mars’ atmosphere tonight, it’ll have just 7 minutes to go from a speed of nearly 14,000 mph (22,000 kilometers) to a soft landing on Mars’ surface. Because Mars is now 150 million miles away from Earth, they and we won’t know if Curiosity landed safely for another seven minutes after that – the time it will take a radio signal to travel between our two worlds. Should be exciting. And you can watch it live via NASA TV.
TO WATCH THE CURIOSITY LANDING ON-LINE: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl will carry a feed including commentary and interviews. The NASA TV Media Channel and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 will carry an uninterrupted, with only mission audio.
The landing will take place at 5:31 UTC (07h31 SAST) on August 6. That is 1:31 a.m. EDT on August 6, 00:31 a.m. on August 6 CDT, 11:31 p.m. MDT on August 5, 10:31 p.m. PDT on August 5. For all viewers, coverage begins a couple of hours before landing, so check!
What can you expect in the livestream? It will almost certainly spend most of its time with mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where very nervous scientists will talk about the formidable challenge of getting a spacecraft to Mars. Although Mars is the planet next-outward from Earth, getting to its surface is hard. The Mars Science Laboratory carrying the Curiosity rover is the 40th mission from Earth to Mars. Of these, only 15 have been successful so far.
Mission scientists do, of course, want to learn tonight whether Curiosity has touched down safely. But they say that, under some conditions, it could be up to three days before they know for sure that a safe landing has occurred.
- EarthSky
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