I can't even begin to think just what sort of maths was involved in steering a space probe 300 million miles at 13,000 mph before dropping it through an atmosphere a fraction of the Earths and then bring it to a soft landing on the ground but i guess my GCSE 4 in Maths wouldn't cut it.
Whoever worked it all out deserves a pat on the back because Mars now has an extra lump of metal on it courtesy of us Earthlings as the latest Nasa robot survived the seven-minute plunge to the surface of the Red Planet as is now sniffing around and measuring Marsquakes.
Using a combination of parachutes and reverse rockets, the probe put down on a vast plain called Elysium Planitia, close to the Red Planet's equator and officially, it is going to be drilling deep into the Martian crust to provide us with important scientific data but it will also be nosing around what is claimed by conspiracy theorists to be a walled city well as what they claim is a crashed UFO.
Exciting stuff, especially as the last few attempts ended with our probes smashing into the Martian ground at high speed as things failed to fire properly but as we are excited about not making a new crater with our space hardware, landing a human safely on the planet may be a bit further away then the Elon Musk's of the world have us think.
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