Mars Rover Curiosity Beats Odds

Almost 70 percent of previous missions to Mars had ended in failure, which explains the significance of Mars Rover "Curiosity" making a safe landing on the red planet. 


A heat shield had to slow the spacecraft from 13,000 mph to about 800 mph. Then a giant supersonic parachute unfurled to slow the rover further to about 200 mph. 


Then onboard radar has to detect the surface, and rocket engines aboard a kind of jet pack have to fire, slowing Curiosity to a crawl. Finally, a bridle had to lower the rover from the jet pack to the surface. 




The landing sequence, dubbed “seven minutes of terror,” required the largest supersonic parachute ever deployed in space, and 76 pyrotechnic explosions. If any one of those explosions had not occurred, Curiosity would have crashed.