MSL Landing Timeline: What To Expect Tonight

An anonymous reader writes "When the Curiosity rover lands on Mars later tonight, it'll be executing a complex series of maneuvers. JPL will be relying on the Mars Odyssey orbiter to relay telemetry back to Earth in time-delayed real-time, and if all goes well, we'll be getting confirmation on the success (or failure) of each entry, descent, and landing phase, outlined in detail here."

Re:crazy

[skipkent]

Don't forget the imperial to metric conversions!

Re:crazy

[moz25]

As long as it doesn't require nvidia drivers for Linux, it should be ok!

Re:Not for any definition of "real time" that I kn

[Anonymous Coward]

Telemetry will be continuously relayed back to earth, true, but with not much less than about a 15 minute latency, owing to the fact that Mars roughly a quarter of a light-hour from earth right now.

True, but for a blueworlder, the blueworld-received-time is real-time, for any definition of real-time consistent with relativity.

Speaker K'Breel knows the instant the Martian Defense Force succeeds in its mission, or fails, and either way he has enough time to throw a Junior Reporter's gelsac beneath the spot where the Skycrane will crash-land. At the moment of impact/invasion, the most recent transmissions from his spies on the Blue World will show a clock dated 10:14 PDT, but that's irrelevant. As far as the blueworlders are concerned, they find out at 10:31 PDT. Loyal Martian Citizens can start celebrating/covering their gelsacs early, but have to wait another 15 minutes (until their view of the blueworlders' clocks show 10:31) before they can enjoy true schadenfreude at the blueworlders' pain, or have hopefully protected their gelsacs in preparation for the ever-merciful Speaker for the Council's reaction to his view of the blueworlders' whoops of joy.

Re:crazy

[gmhowell]

Don't worry, I only used a couple of GOTO statements.

Re:crazy

[M. Baranczak]

Not many people know this, but the Stonehenge scene in "This is Spinal Tap" was based on something that really happened to Black Sabbath. The band wanted a life-sized replica of Stonehenge for their stage show, just like in the movie. They drew up the plans, but at some point (nobody's sure where) 14 feet became 14 meters... So they wound up with this giant thing that cost way more than they planned, and worst of all, it wouldn't even fit on any of the stages they were playing. After this, and a series of similar mishaps, NASA stopped hiring members of Black Sabbath.

From the other side of the dateline ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in NZ, we've already seen it descend. Can't tell you how it came out, owing to a non-disclosure agreement but ...

Re:crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

I only used one...

GOTO MARS;