NASA: Phoenix's Mars landing

NASA TV: click (there was a video here, I removed it to avoid unexpected noise)

Double-click the video for full screen

Live coverage of the landing of the Phoenix spacecraft - that is expected to study water and conditions for primitive life on the planet - should begin here, on NASA TV, at 6:00 pm Eastern Daylight Saving Time (midnight Central European summer time). Signals about atmospheric entry should arrive to Earth around 7:46 pm EDT.




Landing should occur seven minutes later, assuming that they successfully reduce the speed from 3.5 miles per second to zero.

The probability that the USD 325 million gadget - by far the largest grant awarded to the University of Arizona - successfully lands is measured, in a frequentist fashion based on landing attempts since 1971, to be 5/11. Good luck. :-)

Update: It worked! See five minutes of growing excitement in NASA.

Meanwhile, NASA TV talks about the GLAST experiment, the greenness of (and everyday life at) the International Space Station ;-) etc.

Engineering bonus: Rotating car, Nissan Pivo ("pivo" means "beer" in Czech), has no reverse.