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Seven Minutes of Terror: NASA's Curiosity Rover to Land on Mars This Weekend

03.08.2012
How do you get the largest Mars rover yet--one the size of a Mini Cooper with six wheels, a host of scientific instruments including a with a seven-foot range, and a --from space to the surface of Mars? The last two NASA rovers to land on Mars were the size of shopping carts and used a bouncing to deliver those rovers safely. This time, with the larger Curiosity, NASA is going sci-fi: It'll use a sky crane to gently land the largest rover yet on Mars.

If you haven't yet seen the video, check out what's being called the "" video that details the engineering challenges involved in getting Curiosity to Mars, including this sky crane system. NASA Planetary Science Directory James Green says this is "the most difficult entry, descent, and landing... of a planetary science rover ever attempted, anywhere" in the solar system.

How do you get from rocketing over 13,000 miles per hour in space to safely roving on the red planet?

After slowing down through the Martian atmosphere with a parachute, the spacecraft with the rover will deploy what's effectively a hovercraft with retrorockets. The hovercraft (has anyone nicknamed it Boba Fett?) will lower Curiosity down to the surface at , then whisk itself away from the rover landing site and to crash elsewhere on Mars. Curiosity will unfold itself, and begin roving on the surface of Mars to learn more about the history of Martian geology, especially the effects of water.