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is zero room for error. about 17 minutes from now, if all goes as planned, the rover will touchdown on the martian surface. but it takes 14 minutes for a signal to travel from mars to earth, so best case scenario, confirmation will come in about 31 minutes. we expect pictures around 2 a.m. eastern. now, joining us from the laboratory in california. in moscow r where russian space officials are closely following the development and science correspondent david brodie joins us from edge water, new jersey. but first we will go to john zarrella there live in pasadena. john, we are about to enter the period that officials are calling seven minutes of terror, where they will not know if curiosity is alive or dead. that s exactly right, john. this is it. they ve all been using the olympic term that they have to stick this landing. as you pointed out, that this maneuver to entering the atmosphere of mars, traveling at 13,200 miles an hour, in less than ten minutes from now, th ....
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 ....