mars

If you have even the slightest interest in space exploration, you know the Mars Curiosity rover has successfully touched down on the Red Planet.

Watching online videos doesn't do the mighty space explorer justice. To put it in perspective, Ford put together an infographic comparing the Rover with a 2013 F-150 SVT Raptor.

Let's just say the truck wouldn't stand a chance in the harsh conditions of Mars, but the Ford does have certain advantages. At $43,970, the Raptor is kind of expensive, but the Rover Curiosity mission has racked up a $2.5 billion bill. That's equivalent to 56,857 of the fancy trucks.… Read more

PASADENA, Calif.--In an unparalleled technological triumph, a one-ton nuclear-powered rover the size of a small car was lowered to the surface of Mars on the end of a 25-foot-long bridle suspended from the belly of a rocket-powered flying crane late Sunday to kick off an unprecedented $2.5 billion mission.

With flight controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory anxiously watching telemetry flowing in from Mars, 154 million miles away and 13.8 minutes after the fact, the Mars Science Laboratory rover -- Curiosity -- radioed confirmation of touchdown at 10:32 p.m. PDT (GMT-7; 1:32 a.… Read more

PASADENA, Calif.--Dutifully executing its complex flight control software, the Mars Science Laboratory silently raced toward its target Sunday, picking up speed as it closed in for a 13,200-mph plunge into the Red Planet's atmosphere and an action-packed seven-minute descent that will require a rocket-powered "sky crane" to lower a one-ton nuclear-powered rover to the surface.

The target is Gale Crater and the goal is a pinpoint landing near the base of a three-mile-high mound of layered rock that represents hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of years of martian history, a frozen record of … Read more

The arrival of the Curiosity rover on Mars may well be the biggest, boldest extraterrestrial landing for NASA since Apollo 11 settled down on the moon on a summer's night in 1969.

Curiosity is scheduled to land in the Red Planet's Gale Crater late Sunday or very, very early Monday, depending on your Earthbound time zone. Confirmation of the landing should come at about 10:31 p.m. PT Sunday for folks on the U.S. West Coast, or 1:31 a.m. ET Monday for those on the East Coast. The rover will have actually touched down … Read more

PASADENA, Calif. -- The Mars Science Laboratory rover, still attached to its drum-shaped interplanetary cruise stage, closed in on the Red Planet on Saturday, steadily accelerating under the increasing tug of the planet's gravity as it streaked toward a precisely targeted plunge into the martian atmosphere overnight Sunday for a high-stakes descent to the surface.

"The spacecraft and ground systems are all healthy and performing as expected," said MSL mission manager Arthur Amador. "The spacecraft is now in the EDL (entry, descent, and landing) approach configuration, in our final approach orientation, pointing our medium gain antenna … Read more

It's not every day that you land a spacecraft on Mars, even if you're NASA. And in the case of the Curiosity rover, hurtling toward a Mars landing as Sunday night turns into Monday morning, the space agency is tempting fate with a novel approach that involves a big parachute, a specially designed winch, and some very high hopes.

The rover's descent through the Martian atmosphere, which NASA has dubbed the "Seven Minutes of Terror," will be an edge-of-your-seat experience, despite the space agency's excruciating preparations.

Consider, for instance, just one key element that … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

On this day in 1992, "Jeremy" premiered on MTV.

Great collection of what Olympic divers look like mid-jump.

NASA to air Mars landing in Times Square.

Digg unveils revamped home page.

FCC to Verizon: You don't have a right to block tethering apps.

Direction of Justin Bieber documentary to reboot He-Man movie.… Read more

No spam in Tuesday's top tech stories:

It's not often we get a shakeup in the email world, but say hello to Microsoft's new free email account, Outlook.com. It'll eventually be replacing Hotmail, but you might want to grab your name now. There's a new, clean look and it ties in your social media contacts. It's not too far off from what you may be used to already in Gmail, as you'll be able to tell from CNET's full overview of the features.

The Mars Science Laboratory rover, called Curiosity, will … Read more

To help scientists and engineers follow the action 154 million miles away, the trajectory of the Mars Science Laboratory was set up to make sure the rover's descent to the surface of the red planet occurs within view of three orbiting satellites.

NASA's Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, along with the European Space Agency's Mars Express satellite, will capture telemetry from the Mars Science Laboratory as the spacecraft makes its nail-biting seven-minute plunge to the floor of Gale Crater overnight Sunday.

But Odyssey is the only one of the three capable of "bent pipe&… Read more