Watch the Nail-biting 7 Minutes of Terror in JPL's Mission Control

By Nancy Atkinson - August 6, 2012 at 7:20 AM UTC | Planetary Science

Live through the tense moments of waiting to find out if the Curiosity rover made it safely to Mars' surface and the joy and elation of six more wheels on Mars.

UPDATE:

Shortly after we posted this NASA video late last night/early this morning of the events that took place in JPL's mission Control, it was taken down in due to a copyright claim by Scripps Local News. As you can see in the comments below, everyone was wondering how public domain footage from NASA could be copyrighted. Motherboard and

Gizmodo

uncovered what actually happened in Scripps' "zealous takedown spree," wrote Gizmodo. "They have a history of this sort of thing. The video has since gone back up, but it stands a particular egregious example of the way YouTube's Content ID system allows third parties to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to takedowns." Read more about it at those two links.

And thanks to

Raam Dev

who supplied a back-up version of the events that we could post in the interim. His video is below.

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Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com