NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Closes in on August Landing on the Red Planet – Live Video of Mars Landing Online

Curiosity, NASA’s most advanced planetary rover, will soon make its landing on the surface of Mars. According to the space agency, the August landing of Curiosity will position the “car-sized” rover beside a Martian mountain where it will begin “two years of unprecedented scientific detective work.”

“The Curiosity landing is the hardest NASA mission ever attempted in the history of robotic planetary exploration,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “While the challenge is great, the team’s skill and determination give me high confidence in a successful landing.”

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft which has carried Curiosity across the gulf of space between the Earth and Mars will undergo a rapid deceleration from about 13,200 mph to allow the rover to land on the surface at about 1.7 mph. Touch-down on the Martian surface is currently scheduled for 1:31 a.m. EDT on August 6th.

The landing of the Curiosity Mars rover will be carried live by NASA TV and will also be streamed live over the internet from the NASA feed and can be watched here below.

According to NASA, the seven minutes of the deceleration are perhaps the most critical to the success of the Mars landing. “Those seven minutes are the most challenging part of this entire mission,” said Pete Theisinger, JPL’s MSL project manager. “For the landing to succeed, hundreds of events will need to go right, many with split-second timing and all controlled autonomously by the spacecraft. We’ve done all we can think of to succeed. We expect to get Curiosity safely onto the ground, but there is no guarantee. The risks are real.”

Watch live streaming video of Curiosity Mars Landing from NASA TV here

Live video from your Android device on Ustream