This morning NASA successfully landed a probe on Mars. After a 9 month journey, the final 7 minutes of the trip were set to be the most risky, but the probe landed safely and has started transmitting data back to mission control. The probe is called Curiosity and is about the size of a small car. The purpose of Curiosity is to investigate the possibility of previous microbial life on Mars. If you are interested in finding out more about the mission then there are a number of links that provide further details:
- NASA Mission to Mars page – sounds like it should be a film, but it is real!
- 7 Minutes of terror – even more like a Hollywood film, this is the NASA landing video.
- UK Space Agency information page
- John Bridges Mars Science Laboratory Blog
If you have any more interesting links to the Curiosity mission, please add them as comments and i will add them to the list.