Yeah NASA!

Indeed. Well done NASA.

It's nice to see humanity actually achieving something other than killing itself.

That was an awesome landing.

Every once in a while, humanity does some really cool things that make you proud to be part of the team.

I also enjoy all of the quips about us being able to get updates in a more timely fashion from Mars than by NBC for the London Olympics.

There were rovers on Mars in the 70s, why was last night so special?

SKY CRANE

@jebblue:

There were rovers on Mars in the 70s, why was last night so special?

what.

@jebblue:

There were rovers on Mars in the 70s, why was last night so special?

There were humans on the moon then too! We still haven't been back.

"Earth…what a shit hole."

That's a quote from a film btw ;-)

@jebblue:

There were rovers on Mars in the 70s, why was last night so special?
Um no, there were LANDERS on Mars in the 70's, Sojourner in 97 was the first rover on Mars and was basically a tiny proof of concept device without much science behind it.

8 month transit, 1 ton rover, innovative method of putting the rover on the planet, nuke power supply, numerous hi-res camera's, high bandwidth data relay in orbit (actually more then one orbiter), very high tech robotic gear, the latest in scientific testing gear, etc etc etc, make this mission far past the edge of "bleeding".

What cave have you be buried under for the last couple of years not to know what type of tech marvel NASA has put successfully and safely on ANOTHER FREAKING PLANET?

@kbar:

@jebblue:

There were rovers on Mars in the 70s, why was last night so special?

what.

@vonskippy:

@jebblue:

There were rovers on Mars in the 70s, why was last night so special?
Um no, there were LANDERS on Mars in the 70's, Sojourner in 97 was the first rover on Mars and was basically a tiny proof of concept device without much science behind it.

Well, actually there were rovers sent there in the 1970s, only that things didn't work out so they never got a chance to… uhm… rove? I suppose they must be there though :P

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars2#Prop-MRover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars3#Prop-MRover

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program ?

Viking had landers, not rovers.

I was sure it was going to fail. Not that I wanted it to, but because historically most attempts to land on Mars have failed (over half, including some notable recent NASA failures). When I first read about the sky crane, I was convinced it was too complex, that something was likely to go wrong. It's certainly a big departure from the "just cushion the thing real good so it can survive a hard landing" approach.

I'm very happy to be proven incorrect. It looks like the sky crane worked flawlessly, and the fact this thing isn't solar powered means we could see unprecedented rover lifespans that dwarf anything we've seen before (IIRC one of the big issues was that the solar panels on previous units eventually got caked in dust).

In terms of rovers, the USSR tried to land two of them in 1971. The first crash-landed, the second failed after 20 seconds. I guess technically you could say the second one was a successful landing, even if 20 seconds is not a useful lifespan. They were to move via skis rather than wheels, but they were still rovers.