You hit the thin atmosphere at 13,200 miles an hour -- 3-point-7 miles per second -- a real need to slow down, fast: enter friction and deployed heat shield, then 'chute, slowing from 900 miles an hour to 180 in just two minutes, then sky crane, to surface.
Cross your fingers, and hope a long list of mission-critical events, all closely timed and exactingly choreographed, happen precisely on cue. No pressure: We're just trying out a trunkful of new landing operations, is all -- Talk about a mission with lots of precisely-moving parts!
It was enough to make a master Swiss watchmaker jumpy. It all came off like clockwork, and without a hitch, as you know.
Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity, safely landed, a whole ton. In feet: nearly 10 long -- not counting the arm -- 9 wide, 7 tall. About the size of a small SUV. Its prime mission will last one Martian year, or 23 Earth months.
The JPL center, of course, erupted into thanksgiving -- fitting, given that Curiosity took wing two days after Thanksgiving Day, last year, and is just now getting there.
On Monday, August 6, 1945, after six months of intense firebombing of 67 other Japanese cities,...
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