Mars Fever - 7 Minutes of Terror

The challenges accepted and conquered that allowed Curiosity to land on Mars.

This is a fantastic piece of advertising. It shows the challenges that this team had to get past in order to land Curiosity on Mars. More importantly - it makes the viewer want to see if it works. This is a worst case scenario. This can't possibly work, but we're trying it anyways.

I was too young to remember it originally, but it's like Star Wars Episode 5: The Empire Strikes back:

Empire Strikes Back

(Spoiler Alert)

• The Rebel alliance has been scattered and their main base destroyed.


• Han Solo is frozen in carbonite and being sent to Jaba the Hutt


• Luke has ignored Yoda's advice, walked into a trap and been severely wounded.


• Darth Vader claims to be Luke's father.

It's as bad as it can get. There is no way our band of heroes can possibly come back from this. The odds are just too much!

George Lucas set the stage to make people wonder and question the future of Star Wars. Surely the good guys would win! But...

It worked. People couldn't wait for the next movie to come out. They needed to know how it would all work out. How do they rescue Han? What doom has Luke brought upon himself by leaving his training? Is Luke's dad really James Earl Jones? And will we finally get to see Leia in a metal bikini? Tune in to the next movie!

Photo by: AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Mars rover Curiosity has everything against it. The atmosphere that is able to burn it to a crisp but thin enough that it won't slow the rover down. Technology that has never been tested, let alone used. A series of events that all have to happen perfectly. Any one mistake. One miscalculation (Hubble needed glasses) can cause this entire mission to be a failure and we won't even know until 7 minutes AFTER the event if it was successful.


That's so serious prime time level viewing right there. Passion, danger, excitement.

(Spoiler Alert)

It worked!

Oh.. and Curiosity landed safely too.

 Photo by: AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech