On Monday August 6 our latest robotic explorer will arrive at Mars, and, this being an American mission, they’re doing it bigger and better than ever before. The Mars Science Laboratory, or the Curiosity rover, will slam into the upper Martian atmosphere at more than 20,000 km/h, shedding its interplanetary velocity as an impressive shooting star. A few minutes later, she will pop out a drogue parachute, cutting loose again after just 100 seconds, before finally being winched the last few metres to the ground beneath a hovering rocket-powered platform, known as the sky crane. This is the first time that such a complicated and risky descent system has been attempted, but it’s absolutely necessary to land such a large rover mission.
Curiosity is a