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Posted on August 5, 2012 at 3:44pm by Erica Ritz
This image, made available by NASA, shows Mars' Gale Crater. (Photo: NASA/AP)
(The Blaze/AP) — NASA’s most high-tech Mars rover on Sunday zeroed in on the red planet where it will attempt a tricky celestial gymnastics routine during a “seven minutes of terror” plummet through the atmosphere.
The Curiosity rover was poised to hit the top of the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph. If all goes according to script, it will be slowly lowered by cables inside a massive crater in the final few seconds.
NASA was ready for the “Super Bowl of planetary exploration,” said Doug McCuistion, head of the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters.
“We score and win or we don‘t score and we don’t win,” said McCuistion.