Land the Curiosity rover on Mars with the Kinect?

[dlavery]

Some people were wondering about the reference made during the Championship in St Louis about "using items from your FRC kit to share in the exploration of Mars by the Curiosity rover." Well, now the story is out.



To get gamers engaged with the Curiosity's travels, NASA teamed up with Microsoft to create the Mars Rover Landing game, available for download free via XBox Live. With this application, you can use the Kinect controller (the same one you got in the FRC kit) to simulate the entry, descent and landing of the Curiosity Mars rover in (almost) the same manner that the actual rover will land on August 6 (August 5 on the west coast).

Read the USA Today story here

This is just one of several similar application developments that we have been working on to increase access to the Curiosity mission by the entire country. There is more to come. With these tools and applications, we want to entire country (and world) to come and explore Mars with us!

-dave