Curiosity lands safely on Mars

by mdr on Aug. 06th, 2012

First photos of Mars: Curiosity's shadow and Mar's horizon taken from two different cameras on the rover.
First photos of Mars: Curiosity's shadow and Mar's horizon taken from two different cameras on the rover.Courtesy NASA via UStream
The Mars rover Curiosity managed to make it through seven minutes of terror and land safely and pretty much flawlessly this morning on the surface of the Red Planet. The amazingly complicated landing, which took place around 12:25 CDT, was broadcast on the internet and on NASA-TV. It was very thrilling to watch, and a great accomplishment for all the scientists involved. They were ecstatic, as you can well imagine.

You'll be able to view additional photographs as they come in at NASA's website. You can also replay a computer simulation of the landing here.

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Your Comments, Thoughts, Questions, Ideas

David Poul's picture
David Poul says:

That does really a very amazing fact as always!! You post the curiosity lands safely on Mars. Anyway I enjoyed this conception. Keep it up though! :)

posted on Mon, 08/06/2012 - 9:46am
logan's picture
logan says:

can we have civilization on mars? or is it just something we can study.

posted on Mon, 08/06/2012 - 6:33pm
mdr's picture
mdr says:

In a very small way we already have a hint of civilization on Mars, or at least several robotic outposts of civilization there. But you probably mean an actual society of humans living on Mars. It's possible that that will happen in the future, but it would have to be an enclosed civilization with a manufactured earth-like atmosphere. The Martian atmosphere contains over 95% carbon dioxide (CO2) and just 0.13% oxygen. Carbon dioxide is a waste product of our breathing on Earth, so it's not so good for us, but It could be conducive to growing plants, which in turn could convert the CO2 into oxygen. Also there's the problem of water, which could probably be manufactured as well using the elements found on Mars, but a lot would be needed to sustain a civilization. Scientists suspect water exists under the planet's surface but they don't know that for certain. The SUV-sized robotic geologist, Curiosity, could change all the speculation.

posted on Wed, 08/08/2012 - 1:00pm

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