ORLANDO, Fla – NASA has figured out how to generate curiosity about Curiosity.
The space agency edited a slick, dramatic, Hollywood blockbuster-type 5 minute movie about its upcoming mission to Mars and posted the video on YouTube, garnering more than half a million hits as of Monday.
NASA launched Curiosity, the car-sized rover, late last year from the Space Coast, intended to explore Mars and help determine if there ever was life on the planet and if there ever could be life. The rover is set to touch down on Mars on August 6.
The video, named "7 Minutes of Terror," details the extremely complicated challenges that Curiosity will face once it enters the Martian atmosphere.
"It takes 14 minutes for the signal from the spacecraft to make it to earth, so that's how far Mars is away." the narrator explains. "So when we first get word that we've touched the top of the atmosphere, we first get word that the vehicle has been alive, or dead, for 7 minutes.
"Mars is really hard to slow down, because it has just enough atmosphere that you have to deal with it, otherwise it will destroy your spacecraft."
Engineers expect Curiosity will first jettison its heat shield, deploy a parachute, fire rocket boosters, and then carefully and gently lower the rover down the surface, slowing the entire craft from 13,000 miles an hour to nearly 0, all in a nerve-wracking 7 minutes.