Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

I’m usually quite on top of events in space exploration; I followed the Spirit and Opportunity landings with verve, and was obsessed with the daily feeds that came back from Cassini. Somehow, this one just slipped under my radar, but thankfully, someone over at Xbox decided it would be cool to make a big deal out of it, and Friday, two days before the landing of the new Curiosity rover, I got wind of the whole thing.

Then I saw the video (below) that described the “7 minutes of terror” of landing, and saw the Rube Goldberg style method of getting this rover from orbit to the surface. My first reaction—the reaction of many and, reportedly, the reaction of some of the scientists on the team—was “That’s crazy!” Orbit, entry, heat shield, parachute, pop the shield, dump the contents, balance on rockets, and then a skycrane to lower the rover to the surface? Could the possibly have put in more moving parts? Why didn’t they just pack it in balloon-wrap and drop it like they did before? Why was this devilishly hard collection of contraptions necessary?

Reading more, I found out why. This thing is huge. The rovers Spirit and Opportunity, well, they were about the size of a coffee table. Maybe a skosh bigger. The rover Curiosity is the size of an SUV. It’s wheels are about four feet in diameter. It can go over obstacles that are 30 inches high! On Earth, it weighs in at a full ton. Wrapping this one up in styrofoam peanuts simply ain’t gonna work.

And so, we tuned in and watched the whole thing, live, along with 200 flop-sweating scientists, as Curiosity entered the “7 minutes of terror,” and believe me, that was no misnomer.  The signal takes 14 minutes to reach us from Mars, so by the time we first heard that Curiosity was entering the atmosphere, in actuality it had already hit the surface of Mars, one way or the other.

We watched, we listened, we grinned with each positively completed step. We felt the thrill when the heat shield was deployed, and we cheered out loud when the chute opened and radar picked up the surface. We fell hushed as the skycrane began to lower the rover, and when the bridles were cut and Curiosity was on the surface, we clapped and cheered some more.

And then it opened its eyes, and sent us two, beautiful pictures, including one, beautiful self-portrait.

I didn’t believe it would work. I prayed it would. I applaud each and every one of the men and women who worked on it and showed that quality still exists in America, and that we can still do some things better than anyone else.

Take pride, folks. You are Geek Gods.

k