The Curiosity Challenge...

On August 5th of this year, at 10:31 PDT, the Curiosity Rover is scheduled to plop down onto the surface of Mars.  It is by far the most advanced probe anybody has ever attempted to land on any planet, and (assuming it lands successfully) we expect it to produce great science data at least through its primary mission.

Curiosity is also the biggest and heaviest probe anyone has ever attempted to land on Mars, and this meant some tough engineering problems to solve.  The engineering solution involves an advanced ablative heat shield, the largest supersonic parachute ever designed, a rocket-powered sky crane, high resolution descent radar, and a completely autonomous computer-controlled landing system.  Every bit of this has to work perfectly, or the Curiosity landing will fail (as so many previous Mars landings have failed).  For those of us who, like me, are more excited about robotic probes like Curiosity than we are of the manned space program, this landing is real edge-of-the-chair stuff.  It's also a spectacular feat of engineering in its own right, completely aside from the rover itself.

The video below is a sort of mini-documentary, very nicely done, about the technology developed to set Curiosity down on the surface of Mars...