[rarestia]

Whoa! They almost landed outside the landing ellipse. Probably because the parachute opened later than expected?

I think the more appropriate comment here is, "Wow... they landed INSIDE of the ellipse!"

I understand complex mathematics. I understand physics and chemistry. My brain, unfortunately, can't put the two of them together in a functional way. To see this sort of accuracy, landing a dishwasher on a rock that's over 230 million miles away, blows my freaking mind.

[tlj18]

Yes, it is absolutely incredible that we can do that, send a machine several hundred million miles, then flawlessly land on a specific area on a planet that is not currently friendly to human life. And I do mean flawlessly. But the fact is, that is what I expect from our space program. I expect to see American excellence on each mission, and that is exactly what we see on most missions. There have been 12 attempts to land on Mars. It breaks down to 7 attempts by Americans, and 5 by other nations. Six of our attempts have been successful, while only one non-American attempt. It's not luck; we are just that good.