My Liveblog of Mars Curiosity Landing

I'd written a general-public article about a week ago explaining the Mars Curiosity mission: what it's there for, why it's cool, and why I was so excited about this one.
I started to update that page for tonight, er, last night's landing. Then I decided...what the heck, why not just LIVEBLOG THE LANDING!

And then I found out that JPL had this 3D visualizer, like a video game, streaming live data of where the spacecraft was, what she was doing, superimposed with computer graphics to let us "see" what was happening while it was happening, based on the telemetry Curiosity was sending back.

Here's a screencap from the visualizer that I grabbed on the way down. Click to read my notes and see the first photos of Curiosity on the surface of Mars:

"See that mountain, inside that giant crater? I'm going to motherfucking LAND MYSELF NEXT TO IT. I'll call you when I'm down." -- Mars Curiosity Rover

 

UTTERLY FRICKING AWESOME.

My Cat vs. the Mars Curiosity Rover

Okay, I know how this magic trick works, but I am STILL AMAZED: