I’d been following the progress of NASA’s “Curiosity” project for a good while, and was so happy when I heard that it’s launch had been scheduled for this morning. Knowing that I’d probably want to post about it afterwards, I even bookmarked this video from Friday’s PBS Newshour:
Well… Imagine my disappointment when I managed to sleep through the whole damned thing! 
Fortunately, our friend J. Major of the Lights in the Dark blog was much more diligent:
“This morning at 10:02 a.m. EST, the Atlas V rocket with Mars Science Laboratory (a.k.a. Curiosity) encapsulated in its payload successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base. It was a beautiful launch and the HD video is above… enjoy!” … More at Curiosity Launches!
That Mars Science Laboratory link has all sorts of background info on Curiosity’s mission, and you can find lots more great NASA videos at NASAKennedy’s Channel on YouTube.
All together now: 
I want ice water.
More Visual Treats
I Want Ice Water! 
We will await your report.
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And, hopefully, there will be great news to report! Of course Curiosity won’t get to Mars until next August, so you probably shouldn’t be holding your breath! 😀
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Friggin slow isn’t it? Should have gone Qantas 🙂
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Damned laws of physics! 🙄
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You have plenty of time to make the post, 35,000,000 miles, what if it crashs after all that work.
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Bite your tongue my friend! It’s hard enough getting these projects funded in the current political environment without arming the naysayers with disasters like that! 😯
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I’m on my way to casualty, i can’t stop the blood 😆
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Super smileys
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I keep expecting my system to freeze up while I’m searching for the right one though! 😯
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I didn’t even know about this project until a day or two before the launch. I was so excited to see another important mission begin! Sorry you missed it. Something about seeing it live just can’t be replicated with video after the fact.
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I don’t even know how well the launch was covered, and I’ve been too wrapped up in football games to check for any rebroadcasts. Did you see it live? I’m going to check to see if I find a demo of the flight path (including expected usage of gravity assists) later. I cant wait for the landing and the info to start coming back!
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Someone’s been playing with the free smiley site 🙄
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They are so cool, but I’m gonna have to add some to my image file so I don’t have to spend so much time searching fro them! 😀
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No, sad to say I missed the launch too. I’ll be holding my breath for the landing. The “sky crane” approach sounds so cool, but so complex … as does the vehicle. Seems like a long shot … but we’ve accomplished some pretty amazing things on Mars already.
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I understand just enough of the math and physics involved to have faith that smarter people than me can actually pull something like this off, but I’m sure glad I wasn’t the poor schmuck who had to convince a bunch of bureaucrats to cough up the financing. Still, I’d love to be able to watch that landing “live!”
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Pingback: Curiosity In Flight « Bill Housley
How facinating both videos were 😀 I was there if you look at about 16 seconds into the video by J. Majoy – ‘Lights in the Dark’ as you can see I was flying out of the lift off area…LOL.
Always putting on a show ;0
I wish it wouldn’t take 8 months to get there!!! Looking forward to it’s arrival.
smiles, Rx
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I thought those beautiful black wings looked familiar. And I’ll bet the film crew was really torn as to which of those great images to follow too! 😀
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Awesome videos. Mars wait for us, we are coming! 😀
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Thanks my friend. So is that one! I hope you don’t mind my editing your comment so it shows here. 😀
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