Get Ready for Mars Landing TONIGHT: Live Video and Top 3 Links

Prepare yourselves fellow space enthusiasts. The long-awaited Mars landing of NASA's Curiosity rover is upon us! The latest projections put the exact time of touchdown at 10:30pm PST tonight — 1:31am for folks on the East coast.

As (we hope) most of you already know from our Associate Producer Lindsey's post earlier this week, SCIENCE will be airing a spectacular recap of the mission and its results the day after the landing. Don't forget to tune in for Mars Landing 2012 at 10PM e/p on Monday night.

For those who want to watch history in the making tonight, NASA is making live video of the entire touch down available live on their NASA TV site. The real time coverage starts tonight at 8:30pm PST / 11:30pm EST.

It's never a bad idea to brush up on the latest news and information ahead of a huge event like this. Luckily for all of us, Discovery News has been covering the Mars landing for weeks now! They've been good enough to put everything Curiosity rover-related together on this wide angle page. Check it out to see articles, video and photo galleries.

If you're short on time and can't look at everything Discovery News has to offer, here are my top 3 picks that will get you up to date ahead of tonight's landing on Mars:

1. Video: Mars Curiosity's Entry, Descent and Landing
   It's time to familiarize ourselves with Curiosity's dramatic entrance into the Martian atmosphere.
   
   
2. Article: Curiosity Steps Up Search for Alien Life on Mars
   NASA's Mars Science Laboratory ratchets up the quest to the next ingredient in the recipe for life — organic carbon.
   
   
3. Photo Gallery: When Discovery News Met Mars Rover Curiosity
   During a special event held at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Discovery News was invited to meet the next mission to Mars: the Mars Science Laboratory known as Curiosity.

 

Enjoy tonight's sure-to-be incredible Mars landing and we'll see you on SCIENCE Monday night at 10pm e/p for an in-depth recap during Mars Landing 2012.

Comments

[Ekene]

Please, what time would that be exactly in Nigeria. I think we're in +1 GMT

[Rider]

what channel is the live coverage on?

[me]

it is on the www.nasa.gov site and landing is in approximately one hour

[mmmc]

There was an error in the title of one of the interviewees. It should have read, "Principal Investigator" instead of Principle Investigator."

[David Turpin]

what a joke i turn this show on to see live stuff about mars ans all the do is blah blah blah about old stuff ive seen many times before

[David Boone]

As a huge Science Channel fan, I have to say that this show was incredibly disaPointing. First, the trailer made it seem as though we were going to get to actually watch the landing. That was skimmed over with about 18 seconds of footage consisting of a dozen shots. The sounds of the mission team were all drowned out by the hosts of the show. This Access Hollywood/MTV style show contained very little that was interesting to people who care about science and a whole lot of meaningless fluff. I hope the Science Channel isnt going to start writing their programming for the Facebook Generation.