Curiosity will be landing, or trying to land, at about 12:30 AM Central Time in the US. A press conference is in progress here, the panelist all opened by saying they’re having to remind themselves to breathe. I’ll be adding to this post throughout the day.
At a press conference today Richard Cook described what is planned. The deep space tracking network will be relaying real time communication with the rover, the first opportunity to hear from the vehicle is likely to be within seconds of landing. Shortly after 12:31 AM engineers will probably know if the landing was a success and there could be images returned a little after that time. On the next pass by an orbiter about two hours later images will probably be returned by the fish eye HazCam.
1. 12:30 AM CT Monday Aug 6.
2. It happens at the same time all over the world, not just in the US (well, excluding relativistic effects). ;-)
It’s about 34 hours from now…
Curiosity coundown clock: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html
1 day, 8 hours, 51 minutes, 27 seconds . . . 20 . . . 15
THANK YOU! I’d been wondering if it were tonight after midnight or tomorrow night after midnight.
Cheers!
BTW. Quintuple collection of Curiosity clips here :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2012/08/03/the-internets-5-best-things-on-nasas-curiosity-mars-lander/
Which is well worth watching! Via the 80Beats blog.
Also via the BadAstronomy blog some extra places to watch / follow events Curiosity landing~wise :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/08/01/curious-about-curiosity-heres-info-on-where-to-watch/
Hope that’s okay & helpful to link these here, my apologies and please let me know if not.
Mars is currently about 20 light minutes away. So strictly speaking, no. Rather, within seconds of light from Mars at the moment of landing reaching Earth.
/pedant