Curiosity landing live from NASA's JPL: How the drama unfolded

El Reg is live from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, waiting to see if the Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity as it's better known, will land safely or crater the surface of Mars. 8:45pm In an effort to keep people occupied NASA has been bussing in celebrities to keep the assembled press talking. Geek icon Will …

[M Gale]

66,000 ustream viewers and climbing...

This has got to be one of the most publicised things NASA has done for years.

Biting nails right now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeff?

Er, did you remember to fill the airbags?

CrrrrrrruuuunNnnnnnnnchhhhhhhhh......

Airbag, I thought you did it!

[M Gale]

Make that 89,000 ustream viewers

Holy pants.

[M Gale]

Over 100,000...

The bandwidth requirements must be pretty damned mind-boggling.

[M Gale]

125,000 viewers

And it seems stage separation is complete.

[Arctic fox]

".....no further course corrections are possible." Time to don the brown trousers..............

............though how I am going to manage that whilst keeping both my fingers and my toes tightly crossed I do not know. -:)

[Arctic fox]

Re: Time to don the brown trousers......I have just now taken them off. This eagle has indeed

..........landed and their data link to the rover appears to be solid. Everything appears to be fine.

[M Gale]

Over 161,000 views...

...and here we go!

[M Gale]

184,000 views...

...and NASA have telemetry. Coo, that's quick.

[M Gale]

204,000 views...

TOUCHDOWN!

[scarshapedstar]

Woo

'Bout time something good happened in these United States. Well, or on Mars. You know what I mean.

[Shannon Jacobs]

Curiosity triumphs on Mars

Congratulations, and I didn't think the robot could pull it off.

Now get to work! :-)

I was on the Utube feed, too, but I forgot to see how many other people were on at the end. Suffice it to say I was distracted.

[ian 22]

Chuffed

First images received and celebration in progress.

Well done!

[Shannon Jacobs]

I meant Ustream there...

And still over 100,000 watching the feed.

[Volker Hett]

This time we come in peace

and not in pieces!

[MrT]

Re: This time we come in peace...

...armed with a laser 'cannon' just in case O;-)

[Silverburn]

Re: This time we come in peace

..unless you're a martian cat, with a fear of robotic, nuclear powered lazer death rays.

I wonder if martian cats have got the equivilent of a John Connor..?

[Mikel]

Nicely done

Hopefully a lot of interesting science to be done out there. Glad to see Curiosity made it.

[Paul Kinsler]

pictures, of dust and shadow, under the naked light, ...

But on MARS!

[Ammaross Danan]

Just saw!

12:09am PST timestamp for The Register's question on the post-landing Q&A. Woot for representing!

[Steve 114]

Re: Just saw!

-and, for two thoroughly sensible questions.

[M Gale]

Re: Just saw!

Unlike myself during the much earlier live Q&A session on Ustream. I just had to ask:

"Given the power source, does this mean you'll be nuking the site from orbit? Just to be sure?"

@NASAJPL's response: "No, we won't be dusting off."

Thumbs up for rocket scientists with a sense of humour.

[Neil Barnes]

One word:

Kudos!

[DoctorB]

Science and engineering at its best

Nothing else to be said.

[Anonymous Coward]

mars is pukka

Not a big bang theory twat in sight till I saw Derek from the builders yard on Sky news

[Jesrad]

Kudos indeed

Congratulations to them ! Hurtling a 1-ton rover over millions of miles and have it land in the right spot, at the right speed so it sticks and does not fall apart, is one helluva dart throw.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Register was THERE!

Anyone notice that the intrepid REGISTER reporter got to ask a question at the news conference? No BBC, Sky or ITV person...Well done. And especially well done to the mission people.

[Steve Evans]

Re: The Register was THERE!

They're all busy at the 'lympics!

[Andus McCoatover]

100%, NASA

enuf.

[Steve Evans]

Time zone....

Note to the author...

When posting stuff on the intarweb with an international audience, it would be nice if times where given a timezone, not just left floating. Preferably a timezone that the whole planet can relate to such at GMT or UTC...

Not giving a time zone, or using one which is obscure or meaningful only to one nation is a tad insular.

Even worse when I'm reading this on a .co.uk website, and the times were obviously not from a time zone you would assume for a .uk domain.

/end rant.

[Anonymous Coward]

7 minutes of terror? 7 minutes of fucking pressing F5, more like.

Well done ustream for constant stuttering and buffering and for finally dropping out entirely at 10:25pm and returning nothing but 503 errors until 10:32pm, thereby missing the entire period of interest. What a complete waste of time that was; internet live TV events remain as shite as they have been since they first began in the '90s.

Anyone who thinks that the internet is anywhere near ready to replace broadcast media is a gullible asshole who has swallowed a bunch of marketing bullshit.

[Trollslayer]

Inspirational

What more can I say?

[patters]

Worked for me

I had no problem watching the Ustream feed. Maybe it was your ISP's fault.

What a cracking achievement. Did you spot the Douglas Adams reference in Curiosity's tweets? (So long and thanks for all the navigation).

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, couldn't have been my ISP.

Sure, they could be responsible for a few dropped packets causing the glitches and buffering while the stream *was* working, but there's nothing they could have done that would have been the cause of NASA's CDN server (mars.jpl.nasa.gov, aka d2cj35nmzi9erd.cloudfront.net = 54.240.166.56 from where I'm sitting) constantly returning HTTP 503 errors for seven solid minutes (not coincidentally at the exact time when it would have been under most load). That could only have been the server itself. (No, my ISP doesn't have a transparent proxy in line.)

[Nameless Faceless Computer User]

Re: Nope, couldn't have been my ISP.

NASA TV has always given me problems. I'm streaming via Roku. Thankfully, not even a glitch during the landing. If anything, they've greatly improved.