@explorezmars: Curiosity live!

On Monday 6 August the Mars rover Curiosity should land on the red planet. From today Enjoy Space and Cité de l’Espace are offering you the chance to follow this event on Twitter, and then by video, direct from the NASA JPL in California!

Despite being the planet most visited by space probes, Mars still remains a mystery.  Might this world have supported life in the past? NASA's Curiosity rover was designed to answer this question. Through the Twitter line shown below we are able to offer you live coverage of the countdown to Curiosity's landing, planned for 6 August at 07:31 am French time*.



@explorezmars is an account on the Twitter social network that is entirely dedicated to the Curiosity mission (also known as MSL - the Mars Science Laboratory). If you have a Twitter account (which is free), simply subscribe to @explorezmars (also free!) to receive regular information in French about the progress of the mission and about Mars in general. You can also ask any questions you may have via Twitter.

Direct video coverage of the landing
at the Cité de l’espace and on the internet!
Be ready to see live direct video coverage of the landing on 6 August of the biggest rover ever sent to Mars (Curiosity is the same size as a small family car). This is provided by Cité de l’espace, in partnership with CNES (the French Space Agency) and with the participation of the astronomy and planetology research institute IRAP (Institut de Recherche en Astronomie et Planétologie), OMP (Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées) (the Midi-Pyrénées Observatory) and of the atmosphere and environmental space observation laboratory LATMOS (Laboratoire Atmosphère Milieux Observations Spatiales).
From 06:45 am on (opening at 06:30 am), the space adventure park in Toulouse is offering you the chance to participate in a special event following the transmissions from the NASA JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in Pasadena, California. In addition the editor in chief of the Enjoy space website will be on hand with an audio and visual link.
If you can't make it to Toulouse, you can always follow this one-off event through direct broadcasts from the JPL on this website. The video window below will be activated on 6 August at about 06:45 am French time.
This will be the most extraordinary phase of this space exploration mission. If everything goes well we should witness a truly amazing feat of technology!


Streaming video by Ustream

You can find out more about Curiosity by watching the video report below.  It shows the novel landing system used to place the rover on the surface of Mars and explains two of the experiments (ChemCam and SAM) that are on board this mobile laboratory, in which France has played its part through the efforts coordinated by CNES.



You can already learn about the fourth planet in our solar system at the Cité de l’Espace "Explore Mars" Mars exploration exhibition (see the video below). This has amazing experiments, interactive presentations and life-size models of the Mars rovers, including Curiosity.





A few Enjoy space articles with more information


Curiosity targets the Gale Crater on Mars



The launch of Curiosity on 26 November 2011
(with recording of our direct video link)



NASA release details of the Curiosity landing zone

Course adjustment for Curiosity

Published 16 July 2012

(*) To be precise NASA's rover will actually land at 07:18 am, but given the distance from Mars to Earth at that time the radio signals will take 13 minutes to reach us. This means that the first signal indicating the success of the mission will reach us at 07:31 am.