Mars Landing tonight!

The thing that impressed me about the operation was the elaborate touchdown procedure. Going from parachute to jet propulsion to lowering the rover down via crane, keeping in mind the 7-minute transmission delay, just absolutely astounds me.

[video=youtube;XRCIzZHpFtY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRCIzZHpFtY[/video]
[video=youtube;hH5pNFROlYU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH5pNFROlYU[/video]
O.o

they can afford thousands and even millions for the vehicle but not 2k for a decent DSLR-quality camera ?

The transmission decay is the reason. They probably spent millions, even hundreds of millions, of dollars developing a camera that could send a signal so far without too much picture degrade.

Sweet pic

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/asset...howard.jpg

Not martians, just expanding our curiosity into space like we own the solar system in general. We are getting a bit too curious for our own good imo.

Dude, there was way more to be worried about when they turned on the Large Hadron Collider, and we survived that, so I'm willing to say there's nothing to worry about here.

Sweet pic

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/asset...howard.jpg

Completely amazing...

Panorama of the crater they landed in

http://www.photojpl.com/curiosity-landin...4fkBPaSqJ/

It's really amazing to just look at these pictures and realize that it's a whole other planet.