Blog Archive

How Curiosity Will Land on Mars, Part 1: Entry

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/22 07:19 CDT | 14 comments

When people first hear about how Curiosity will land on Mars, their first question always is: are they nuts? This is the first in a multi-part series describing how -- and why -- Curiosity will land this way, in excruciating detail.

Curiosity artist's concept EDL 40 skycrane

Cosmoquest Science Hangout Wednesday June 20 2300 UTC: Ravi Prakash, Curiosity engineer

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/18 05:32 CDT | 1 comments

This Cosmoquest Science Hangout featured Ravi Prakash, Curiosity Entry, Descent, and Landing Systems Engineer. He explained how Curiosity will land on Mars, and why they've changed things since Spirit and Opportunity landed.

Curiosity's shrinking landing ellipse

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/11 12:32 CDT | 6 comments

There was good news and bad news in this morning's press briefing about Curiosity rover's upcoming landing on Mars, just eight weeks from now. First, the good news: the landing ellipse has shrunk. The bad news: there's a contamination problem with the drill, and the Odyssey orbiter is in safe mode.

Build your own papercraft Curiosity rover

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/08 02:01 CDT | 1 comments

Glen Nagle pointed me to two awesome papercraft models of the Curiosity rover that you can download and -- assuming you have a LOT of patience and a steady hand -- assemble.

Rovers in the desert

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/14 03:02 CDT | 5 comments

I took a field trip to watch scientists and engineers play in the sand with Mars rover models, and got a bonus tour of some evidence for the "Snowball Earth" hypothesis.

A Tale of Two Martians

Posted by Jim Bell on 2012/01/09 11:15 CST

It's the best of times for Mars exploration because we've got three orbiters and a rover studying the Red Planet. It's also the worst of times for my Russian, European, and Chinese colleagues who were part of the Phobos-Grunt mission.