Seven Minutes Of Hell Turns To Elation As Curiosity Makes Landfall
KRISTIE LU STOUT, HOST: I'm Kristie Lu Stout in Hong Kong. And welcome to News Stream whee news and technology meet. And we begin with a space breakthrough. It is mission accomplished for NASA's Curiosity voyage to Mars. Also ahead, a repeat performance from the world's fastest man. Can any Olympic action today top this? And a not so virtual reality. The growing problem of video game addiction. We'll look at the causes and the consequences. Now NASA called it the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars. It was nicknamed the seven minutes of terror. And it ended in triumph.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Touchdown confirmed. (inaudible)</s>LU STOUT: Scientists celebrated that success at mission control in California. As you can see, there were high fives and hugs all around, even a few tears as some people have worked on this project for the past eight years. And those plans all came down to this daring descent. It took a supersonic parachute to slow the one ton rover, but that alone would not be enough, then a rocket powered sky crane slowly lowered Curiosity to the surface of Mars. And all of this happened without any help from Earth. Now for the next two years, Curiosity will roam the Red Planet. Its mission, to determine whether Mars ever supported life. Now the rover landed inside Gale Crater, the area may once have contained water. Now Curiosity will travel to the center of the crater to Mount Sharp. It's about 5 kilometers high. And those layers of rock provide a history of Mars back to its first billion years. Now curiosity is already sent back a couple of images. And better pictures are expected later this week. John Zarrella joins us now from the jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California live. And John, what a night, take us back to the so- called seven minutes of terror, the landing process that gripped the entire world.</s>JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, well, you know, you just look right behind me and you can see the model there of Curiosity and how big it is -- 2,000 pounds, the size of a small car. And while NASA had tested all of those portions of the landing independently, they couldn't test it all together. So the test bed was the real thing, that seven minutes, hitting the atmosphere 13,000 miles an hour then maneuvering through the atmosphere, then the parachute deploys. Then the heat shield comes off. And then the back shell. And then the sky crane. And on and on and, Kristie, until they actually descended. And at one point, all three of those tethers from the sky crane actually have to be cut at the exact same time. And if any one of these events that we just described had gone wrong, the entire mission would have been lost. So this was high drama, high anxiety, and something that had never been tested before.</s>LU STOUT: Yeah, high drama, high anxiety, and high achievement for NASA. What is the Curiosity mission mean for NASA? Is it a sign that, you know, despite shrinking budgets and the end of the U.S. space shuttle program, that there are more exciting ventures to come for the U.S. space program?</s>ZARRELLA: Well, it was huge. There was a lot riding on this. And the science team, the engineers, everybody at NASA was pretty upfront about it. The fact of the matter is that there are no big, big ticket flagship Mars missions on the horizon after this. This was the last one -- a couple of smaller missions. And had this gone wrong, the chances of other missions being added probably would have been slim to none. The success getting on the ground. And now the real possibility that they can find evidence perhaps, the signatures that life might have existed at one time, on the planet surface, on Mars, that may go a long way to jump start Mars exploration once again. And for the audience out there, it's important to know we will be getting some new very dramatic images later this morning, one taken from the Mars reconnaissance orbiter, which should show Curiosity on the end of the parachute as it descends through the atmosphere. And we may get a series of images just like we call the Apollo moon landings when we saw the Apollo landers coming down onto the surface, there's a descent camera on Curiosity that we understand has captured thousands of images as the vehicle descended through the atmosphere. We'll only get a few of them now, but they should be absolutely spectacular. So, coming up later today more incredible images from the surface of Mars -- Kristie.</s>LU STOUT: You know, it's incredible how much we've been able to see so far thanks to the NASA website. Of course the Mars Curiosity Twitter feed. We screened just then the black and white images of the Curiosity looking at its own shadow on Mars. And as you said, we're going to be getting some color images later, very exciting stuff. Now this is the fourth rover that NASA has put on Mars. How does it compare with the previous projects?</s>ZARRELLA: You know, I wish we could show you the other ones. We had some -- just can't. But this rover, when you looked at the Sojourner rover, and I was here to cover that back in 1997, the Sojourner, the entire Sojourner rover is about that big, maybe that tall. It's about the size of the wheel of Curiosity, one of the six wheels. So in 15 years, and one of the project scientists said, there is more complexity in one wheel on Curiosity than in all of the Sojourner rover, that tells you how far the space agency has come in 15 odd years in Mars research and in developing these incredible spacecraft.</s>LU STOUT: You know, it's incredible they landed this one ton rover on Mars, it landed safely. John Zarrella on the story for us. Thank you so much, John. Take care. Now Curiosity, it may be far from home, but it is not alone. Now there's spirit, there's also Opportunity. They landed on Mars back in 2004 and they're still there. Now Spirit, it stopped communicating two years ago after getting stuck in sand, but Opportunity is still going strong. Its mission was only scheduled to last 90 Martian days. And there were also other orbiters circling the Red Plane. They include Odyssey, which sent back word of Curiosity's successful landing. It has been mapping Mars since 2002. And that makes it the longest working spacecraft ever sent there. Now back on Planet Earth, the world's fastest man is the center of attention. Watched by an estimated 2 billion people worldwide, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, he successfully defended his Olympic 100 meter title on Sunday. He grabbed gold with an Olympic record time of 9.63 seconds, crossing the finish line a good meter ahead of the field. Now in tennis, Andy Murray is the man of the moment in Great Britain after he cruised to victory over Roger Federer in straight sets in the men's singles tennis final. And Venus and Serena Williams, they won the women's double's title. And each sister now has a record four Olympic tennis gold medals. Now today it is day 10 of competition at the Olympics. And for a look at what's coming up, let's get straight to Olympic park and our Zain Verjee is standing by -- Zain.</s>ZAIN VERJEE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kristie. Well, we may be on Earth, but behind me there is still plenty of stars. And they're really doing some out of the world performances, OK, Kristie. Let me just give you an idea of what's on tap today. You've got women's boxing. This is a big deal, because it's the very first time women's boxing is going to happen in any Olympic games. So many eyes on that. Then the men's 400 meter final will happen in a few hours from now in the stadium behind me. One man who will not be there will be Oscar Pistorius from South Africa. I was watching him yesterday night in the stadium where he failed to qualify for the final in the semis. But I mean, the crowd was just amazing. Everybody cheered so wildly for him. And even the winner of that heat exchanged name tags just to give him the kind of respect that he had even achieved the feat to go on that far. Also a lot of attention today, Kristie, is on the women's pole vault. Now the Russian Yelena Isinbayeva is going for a third consecutive gold. This is going to be a really big deal if she gets it, OK. And she's looking in really good shape, because no female athlete in track and field has ever gotten three Olympic titles in one event back to back like this. So a lot of people are seeing if she can do it, if she can clinch it. And finally for the U.S. they're hoping that Gabby Douglas, their star, the it girl gymnast, she's going to be performing on the uneven bars a couple of hours from now. And she's got some pretty tough challengers in Britain. Everyone here is cheering for Team GB. But also Russia and China are going to give her a run, or a vault for her money.</s>LU STOUT: Nice pun action there. Zain Verjee reporting. And there's, what, 18 gold medals up for grabs. We'll check in with Zain a little bit later. Thank you Zain Verjee live from the Olympic venue. We will have more from the games later in the show. Now also ahead here on News Stream, reports that a high level Syria politician has defected to Jordan and what that means for the al-Assad regime as the violence intensifies in Aleppo. Also ahead, Sikhs in India gather to protest a deadly shooting at a temple half a world away. We're getting new details about the suspect in the rampage. Plus, Hong Kong's controversial plan to introduce a national curriculum in schools. Stay with us.