Landing on Mars can be a tricky thing, as NASA has discovered in the past, and while there certainly have been stunning successes with previous rover missions, everyone's curious as to whether the latest rover, called Curiosity, will land safely, too.
Over half of all missions by both the Russians and Americans have ended in failure; in fact six missions never even made it to earth-orbit.
The Curiosity Rover has already travelled an amazing 352 million miles, or 567 million kilometres, something which would certainly give you a hefty number of Frequent Flyer points, and it has taken a good 36 weeks to get there. At the time of writing, the landing will be attempted in a little over an hour.
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NASA reports that its scientists decided not to take up the option of a "final course correction" manoeuvre, presumably they were happy with the effects of earlier course corrections.
The landing can be watched live (albeit with a 14 minute delay) at http://www.nasa.gov/mars - the site requires Flash, which is available for PCs and Macs without issue.
Keen observers will note that every single page of iTWire has, in the top right hand corner, a Ustream box which will play a live NASA TV stream, so you can watch right from iTWire if you want to!
However, you won't be able to watch via the browser on iPads, iPhones or iPad Touch, without downloading the free NASA TV app to watch via those iDevices.
Android devices running Android OS 2.2 and up with Flash should be able to watch via the browser, but the Nexus 7 in its native form does not have Flash so won't play the live stream - even if you're using the NASA App for Android, as it still relies on Flash to work.
NASA TV is already in progress with a pre-landing show, so if you've got a spare corner of your screen, why not tune in now and enjoy the next 60 or so minutes right up until the landing.
In its final approach, the craft will enter Mars' atmosphere at over 20,000km/hr with just 7 minutes to decelerate to rest.
Initially a series of S-shaped curves will be flown in an attempt to have atmospheric friction slow the vessel. At around 450km/hr, a high-velocity parachute will be deployed to bring the lander close to the surface.
Finally comes the most amazing step. A "sky crane" complete with rocket nozzles will take over and carefully lover the package to within about 10m of the surface. At that point, it will hover and lower the rover on cables to the surface. Once done, the crane will disconnect and fly off to the side to crash into the planet's surface; no longer required.
Being in the best location, Australian tracking facilities will be receiving all of the signals from the craft and will be able to report the success (or otherwise) of the mission.
As we said, all of this will occur with a 14 minute delay - that's how long it takes fro light to travel the current direct line between the Earth and Mars; this of course means that the entire process has to be carried out autonomously - a 28-minute round trip is hardly the way to operate a remote control!
Stay tuned for an update once news of a successful landing (or otherwise!) is in.
