Woke up to some good news for a change, after a 352 million mile journey, the 2.5 billion (USD) Mars Science Laboratory successfully touched down its 1 ton rover, dubbed Curiosity, late last night. What an impressive achievement for NASA and JPL, this is definitely a great kudos and booster shot in the ass for the budget starved space exploration program. Seems the planned downsizing of the program is akin to a "going out of business" sale, a casualty of the increasing deficit looming over the country.

But I'm really stoked this worked, the sky crane and retrorocket landing seemed like science fiction...now if everything checks out green on the rover's systems/instruments we'll get some interesting data and pics. Ooh-rah for science n' astronautics!!