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Curiosity Has Landed, the 2m24s definitive edit from NASA Television: 

Get a behind the scenes look a the tension, anticipation and exhilaration experienced by scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. during the Curiosity rover’s harrowing descent through the Martian atmosphere — known as “Seven Minutes of Terror.” News of Curiosity’s safe touchdown following the 13-thousand-to-zero-mile-an-hour descent to the Red Planet’s surface brought elation and high-fives all around. Curiosity begins a two-year investigation of whether Mars is or ever was capable of supporting microbial life.

SCIENCE! Watching Mars Curiosity land last night was *extremely* exciting, but it was just as exciting to share it with the kid this morning.

We watched two videos: the one above focuses on the team at JPL and the one below also shows the animated simulation (which feels just slightly off from the action in the control room, but perhaps better illustrates for kids what’s going on). 

And an exciting turn of events: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter got an image of Curiosity parachuting down! The inset clears the image up a bit.

The kid should see this. #understatement

As of this post, Mars Curiosity is on her own, speeding quickly toward the planet’s surface and quickly toward its fate or future. From NPR: 

Of 13 previous attempts to land space probes on the Red Planet over the past four decades, nearly half failed or immediately lost contact.

Those odds are enough to make tonight’s scheduled landing of NASA’s new rover, Curiosity, a tense, hold-your-breath moment. But the space agency’s plan to use a hovering, rocket-powered “sky crane” to lower the $2.5 billion, nuclear-powered robot 60 feet or so to the Martian surface almost guarantees it will be a suspenseful night at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Just to complicate things, the rover’s rapid-fire descent and landing is entirely automated. With more than 150 million miles separating Earth and Mars, round-trip communications between Curiosity and its far-off human overseers would take nearly half an hour.

“Curiosity is on its own through all this,” says NPR science correspondent Joe Palca, who is monitoring the Mars mission in Pasadena. “Earth is too far away help if things go wrong.”

The communications lag is also why we won’t know whether the rover has successfully landed until 1:31 a.m. ET on Monday, even though landfall is actually scheduled for 14 minutes earlier, at 1:17 a.m. ET.

If you haven’t yet, watch the Seven Minutes of Terror video. But then know that, according to Curiosity herself, we may not know her status until much later than that! Phoning Home: Communicating from Mars.

For up to the minute updates, watch NASA TV live! bit.ly/MarsLive

I thought we couldn’t get more excited about Mars Curiosity’s mission to Mars, but then we saw this popular video about the rover’s “Seven Minutes of Terror” —  the final minutes between entering Mars’ atmosphere and landing on the planet’s surface.

The recently released video outlines exactly how crazy the feat of landing the rover actually is. Named Curiosity, the rover must tear through Mars’ atmosphere, which takes up to seven minutes. However, transmitting a signal to Earth of its progress takes 14 minutes because of the distance between the planets.

“When we first get word that we’ve touched the top of atmosphere the vehicle has been alive or dead for at least seven minutes,” Steltzner said.

In those seven minutes, NASA engineers have set up a complex sequence of procedures that must be followed in order to avoid disaster.

It is truly riveting stuff… the technology, the materials, the planning and all of the external forces must align, with zero margin of error, for curiosity to land safely on the evening of August 5th. “Dare mighty things” indeed.

via Vidque.