humans-in-space:

In November, NASA launched the Mars Curiosity Rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). This video shows how it is going to gently touch down on the Martian surface. Curiosity is about the size of an SUV, so it needs a slightly gentler landing than Spirit and Opportunity’s slow bounce (which you can see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiEoGUHEobo from 1m onwards).

Later today, MSL’s spacecraft will perform some engine burns to properly target Gale Crater, the rover’s landing site.

It never ceases to amaze me - a spacecraft is lining up to hit a target 8 months away on a planet that’s still a full quarter of its orbit away from being in the right place. And it’s spinning, just like Earth, where it was launched from. I know, at the end of the day, it’s just maths, and the movement of the planets is entirely predictable, but I’m still impressed that all these factors can be taken into account and turned into a workable flight plan just from observations of the planets taken from Earth’s surface, while both planets are spinning and orbiting another, third body, at different speeds. And with different gravitational pulls.

Attempts to target other planets were being made alongside the first human beings going into space. Before any human eyes had been up there, just to check and say “yup, it’s what we thought”, primitive automated probes were already going much farther (with varied success!)