Wonder if they are going to screw up on this Mars Lander too.

hopefully everything is ok, and they DONT screw up again

You owe me:

SOURCE: WWW.CNN.COM / WWW.COMCAST.NET

PASADENA, California (AP) -- After a journey of seven months and 303 million miles, a six-wheeled NASA rover will speed like a bullet Saturday night toward the surface of Mars and, if all goes as planned, stop with a bounce.

The plunge through the Martian atmosphere at 12,300 mph will mark the start of the riskiest portion of the voyage thus far.

As the unmanned spacecraft Spirit plummets to the rocky surface 80 miles below, it will rely on the precisely choreographed use of heatshields, parachutes and rockets to slow its descent. Just eight seconds before hitting the ground, the golf cart-size Spirit should inflate a set of airbags to cushion its impact.

The entire harrowing trip down should take just six minutes. A single sharp boulder could doom the entire enterprise.

"It's not the fall that kills you. It's what you hit at the end," said Pete Theisinger, project manager of the $820 million project, which also includes a twin rover, Opportunity, set to arrive on Mars on January 24.

The camera- and instrument-laden rovers are designed to spend 90 days analyzing Martian rocks and soil for clues that could reveal whether the Red Planet was ever a warmer, wetter place capable of sustaining life.

If successful, the six-wheeled, 384-pound Spirit and its twin would become the fourth and fifth U.S. spacecraft to survive landing on Mars.

If neither survives, they will join the wretched ranks of some 20 other spacecraft from various nations that failed to successfully reach the planet.

The latest, apparently, were Japan's Nozomi satellite and Britain's Beagle 2 lander. Nozomi was unable to enter Mars orbit last month; Beagle 2 has been silent since it was to have landed on Christmas Day.

"Some, including myself, call it the `death planet,"' said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science.

NASA hopes to learn almost immediately whether the twin rovers have landed safely.

In 1999, NASA's last attempt at landing on Mars failed when a software glitch sent the Polar Lander crashing to the ground. Its descent took place in a communications blackout, and the lack of data later stymied the investigation into the failure.

Spirit, in contrast, is designed to transmit a series of tones to Earth throughout its descent to signal engineers each time onboard computers order a critical action, such as the deployment of the parachute. Even if Spirit crashes, engineers on Earth will be able to reconstruct its last minutes.

"Entering into Mars is always very tricky, as everyone knows, and we can fail. But we want to learn from those failures, so next time -- of course, we have another rover coming three weeks later, so we do have our own next time -- we can learn from the experience so we can correct any problems," said Polly Estabrook, who is in charge of telecommunications for the landing.

And a nice little drawing of the thing:

On my local news show, they reported it having a "succesful crash". Right there is a perfect example of an oxymoron.

It landed perfectly. Everything went the way that it was supposed to.



There's an image that Spirit (The rover) sent back from mars. (No, NASA didn't add color, this is what it looks like)

[imported_Parrakarry]

Weird... that could be a picture from Earth...

^Possibly Texas.

Well, I think NASA might have had to do some "recolorization" because of some sort of filters the cameras use, but yes, that's what Mars looks like.

And if you want hugely high resolution composite photos, click here.

[Heroine of the Dragon]

AWESOME photos!

[Link47]

My cousin built the thing on it that detects water.

You see, the reason Beagle failed wasn't because of technical faults or anything like that. It was because it was British. We are the masters of herioc failure. Take Scott of the Antarctic for example.

I see I was wrong...this time

But I dont owe you, possibly if there had been a heated argument that had lasted weeks, but not if you just post the sucessful landing and say I owe you