Mars photo
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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When NASA’s Curiosity Rover reaches Mars this August, it’ll takes seven minutes to get from the tip of the atmosphere to the surface of the planet. Those seven minutes are a little scary for engineers who’ve sunk a lot of time into this project, so the descent is called the “seven minutes of terror.” Here it gets highlighted by an awesome, super-dramatic video.

Curiosity will go from 13,000 mph to zero in those seven minutes, and even worse, scientists have to sit at home base and wait it out; it takes 14 minutes to receive a signal, so if Curiosity is totaled, they won’t know about it until seven minutes later.