Curiosity

We are about six and a half hours away from the NASA Mars rover, Curiosity's scheduled touch down on Mars.  The landing plan is very complicated.  This is the largest thing we've ever landed on Mars.  The atmosphere isn't thick enough to use parachutes like on Earth and the gravity is too strong to use reverse thrust like we did on the Moon, so NASA has to get creative to drop some thing on the red planet.  In fact, something like 60% of our attempts to land something there have failed.  Now we are dropping a robotic mobile science lab that's the size of a Mini Cooper, and the plans involve reverse thrusters, parachutes, and an actual elevator cable all working together.  It's a gamble.  They've never tried this before.  It will mean about 2.5 billion dollars down the tubes (in an election year, no less) if it fails.

Please don't fail!  Land that sucker in one piece!

What's worse is, they will lose radio contact as the space craft hits the Martian atmosphere, and shortly after landing they will lose it again when Earth sets at the landing site and we lose the line of sight.  It might be a whole day before Curiosity can contact us!

The expected touch down is something like 1:31am Eastern time.  I plan to be asleep long before then so here's my official Break a Leg to NASA.

I just want to wish you all good luck.  We're all counting on you.