life still exists on mars? and the other part of that equation, rob, is this is the last of the grelast exploration missions on the books for nasa. it could jump-start the ability to get more missions on the books, spend more money. fit goes wro if it goes wrong, this could be the end of mars exploration. whether is this goin is this? visually, what are we going to be able to see if anything at all? sunday morning it will be 1:30 in the morning monday morning pacific time it s 10:30 p.m. sunday night. and you ll watch it right here on cnn. we ll be carrying it live across all of our platforms so you will be able to see it anywhere in the world that you live you can tune in. there is an orbitter that will get images fed down earlier of curiosity coming through the atmosphere and landing at that gale crater site. that will be phenomenal. going to be a terrific time out here and particularly if they get it right which is the key. and olympic analogy, rob, they have to stic
air bags and cushion them with air bags and land it on the surface. that was the tried and trued method. but this rover is the size of a car, 2,000 pounds. it s too big to do it any other way than what they re going to attempt in 36 hours. never before happen. and what they will do is hit the atmosphere at 13,200 miles an hour. they ll begin to slowdown. they ll be maneuvering through the atmosphere and then at some point will deploy a parra chute which will further slow the vehicle but not enough to get it on the ground safely. at that point they will fire some rockets on the spacecraft and it will begin to line itself up with the martian surface then they ll use a sky crane where the rover will actually dissend from the bottom of the landing vehicle and the two will dissend on the surface together. then they will fire off the other part of the vehicle that they no longer need. so that will all take place in a matter of seven minutes, from the time they hit the top of the at