It even sent pictures from the goal line. The spacecraft plunged through Mars' atmosphere, fired up a rocket-powered platform and lowered the car-sized, 1-ton Curiosity rover to its landing spot in 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater. Then the platform flew off to its own crash landing, while Curiosity sent out a text message basically saying, "I made it!""

--source:  here

HUMANITY AKBAR!

After seeing the latest trailers for Disney's upcoming movie John Carter, I felt compelled to update my avatar. Keeping with my ape theme, I'm using one of the Martian white apes. These are aggressive four-armed beasts that vaguely resemble terrestrial apes, hence the name "white apes".

There is an interesting series of photos here--some of the earth--some of other planets, even other planet's moons: "planet-scapes".

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/02/science/space/20111202-pla...