I was using StumbleUpon earlier and I came across this fascinating video that explains what happened in the last six minutes before the Spirit Rover landed on Mars (which translates to how all our probes end up getting to the Red Planet’s surface). Think of it this way: how do you get a big metal bucket to slow down from 12,000 MPH to 1 MPH in the few minutes after it hits the atmosphere of another planet?
Enjoy!
(Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
