http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

Launched from Earth on November 26, 2011 the rover will be landing on Mars later this evening. 

Curiosity's main objectives include determining Mars' habitatability, its climate and geology, and collecting data for future human missions.

This $2.6 billion rover is much larger than the previous rovers Spirit and Opportunity. (Also weighs over a ton!!)

It also is carrying 10x more scientific instruments than the previous generation.

(The following is a mock up to compare the 3 generations of mars rovers)

Landing Procedure for Curiosity

Live Stream of Landing

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

In the mean time I suggest reading up on the story of Spirit and Opportunity and how they both exceed thier initial planned duration (Spirit did 4.8 miles instead of the planned 0.4 miles over +5 years, and Opportunity is still going on today  after doing 21.5 miles over 8 years).

Very interesting, will be following the story for updates. Thanks for the link!

That's cool! I remember seeing a video about this when I went to the Museum of Science and Natural History in Denver in June.

Here's a computer-animated video of the landing process.

That was neat, thanks for the vid.

great vid

Bump for night crowd.

Less than 4 hours away.

Watching Live! Woo Hoo, so excited!

And the Kinect game is actually both fun and helps you understand what is actually going happening. I'm really glad we got that free game - Thanks Microsoft!

everythings going right so far

Touchdown Confirmed! YEAA HAAAA!

Awesome, I hope this one last for years and gives them more than they hope for. I haven't heard of any problems with the rover but they are probably testing everything out right now as they switch things over to the ground team.