Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Thursday, August 23rd.  The sun rises at 6:55.  It’ll be up for 13 hours and 38 minutes, setting at 8:34.   The moon, 1 day before first quarter, will set at 11:41 this evening.

It’s been two and a half weeks since the Curiosity Rover landed on Mars.  I finished the prior two weeks programs less than an hour before Curiosity landed and before heading off for vacation, so this is my first opportunity to talk about the landing.  The so-called “Seven Minutes of Terror” went without a hitch.  Either receiving transmissions directly from the spacecraft or through the Odyssey Mars orbiter, tones from the spacecraft ticked off the landing milestones right on time.  As I’m recording this Curiosity hasn’t moved, however it’s already zapped a rock with its laser, its delivered a panorama of its surroundings, and is still sending frames of the descent movie it took when the heat shield was dropped, until it touched down.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Here’s a mix from the Seven Minutes of  Terror video created before landing cut with actual Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Mission Control footage as Curiosity actually landed.

Here’s another video of the landing cut with scenes of gatherings around the country including Times Square, and video from the landing imager and Curiosity descending on the parachute from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Here is a hi-res descent and landing from the MARDI landing imager. Hat tip to the Bad Astronomer. Play at full screen for best effect.