2012: a space melodrama

In just nine days, NASA will attempt to place its Martian Science Laboratory on Mars. It’s an operation so fraught with extreme technological challenges, the space agency calls it seven mintes of terror. By the time radio signals reach Earth and alert scientists that Curiosity Rover’s perilous descent has begun, it will actually have been over for seven minutes, and rover will be dead or alive on the surface of the red planet.

H/T: Alexis Madrigal