America!
On 6 August 2012, at 5:14 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration landed the mightiest rover yet on Mars. Many people watched the landing "live", or as close to live as possible since light (and radio information) 14 minutes to get to earth from Mars. However, I doubt few of you know just how significant this is. Allow me to explain.
We humans have built an exploration vehicle powered by a mini nuclear reactor only to lob it into space via a controlled explosion and then follow the vehicle as it escapes earth's gravitational field, traverses deep space, and lands on Mars using a jetpack--all while taking into account the relativistic time dilation as well as the Doppler Effect. Oh, and did I mention that humans managed to take a picture of the robot as it landed from one of the three satellites orbiting Mars?
Yeah, be proud humans. You rock!
Fun Fact: Curiosity is the mightiest rover to land on the Red Planet. Did you know that the robot's arm is strong enough to pick up and flail around one of the smaller Mars Exploration Rovers?
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