Design software helps to land Curiosity on Mars

Early last month, after an epic 8½ month voyage through the inner Solar System, NASA’s Curiosity rover touched down on the surface of Mars.

Described by the space agency’s leadership as the most challenging robotic mission in its history, Curiosity’s journey to the red planet was a dramatic illustration of one of the great truisms of space travel: the success or failure of years of engineering effort frequently boils down to a breathless few minutes as the landing site comes into view.

In a critical period dubbed “seven minutes of terror” by the engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the probe carrying the rover left the freezing temperatures of deep-space and began a dramatic deceleration to the planet’s surface that tested the onboard engineering systems to the limit. Incredibly, Curiosity touched down at the precise moment and in the exact spot pinpointed by the project’s engineering team years before. The SUV-sized rover, the largest vehicle of its kind ever to land on another planet, has now begun its quest to discover whether Mars might have once supported life.