Curiosity Launch

[skimoose]

Wake up and put NASA TV on.

Curiosity launches in 10 minutes!

Dave, you're going to have quite the motor pool on Mars.

[DonRotolo]

Cool Arthur, and thanks!

[Matthew Blake]

Relevant.

http://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=P4boyXQuUIw

[staplemonx]

Here is a cool breakdown of curiosity



Wonderful infographic from New Scientist

Curiosity iluanched just after 10 am EST Saturday morning with a plan of landing in the Gale Crater on Mars in August 2012. With Curiosity's built-in geoChemistry lab (SAM - Sample Analysis at Mars), we may get more answers about whether (microbial) life would have been sustainable on Mars.

More about SAM and the Curiosity mission in this wonderful short video from NASA: http://goo.gl/orZXs

[Hallry]

With it's landing spot's close relativity to the current location of Spirit, do you think that it would be able to roll over to Spirit and push Spirit out of the hole its wheel is stuck in?

[Aren Siekmeier]

Curiosity may be landing close to Spirit relative to the size of the planet, but it's still about 2000 km away, and Spirit only went about 8 km. Besides the fact that if Curiosity ever did get there, Spirit has already been declared "dead" since we haven't been able to communicate with it for over a year.

These rovers really are impressive. Less than a billion dollars got both Spirit and Opportunity to another planet for 6 years, and one of them is still going! Let's hope for the same success for Curiosity.