PASADENA, Calif. — After an 8 1/2-month voyage through space,
NASA’s souped-up Mars spacecraft zoomed toward the red planet
for what the agency hopes will be an epic touchdown. The fiery
punch through the tenuous Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph
Sunday night marks the beginning of “seven minutes of terror” as
the Curiosity rover aims for a bull’s-eye landing inside a
massive crater near the equator. The latest landing attempt is
more nerve-racking than in the past because NASA is testing out
a new routine. Curiosity will steer itself part of the way and
end on a dramatic note: Dangling by cables until its six wheels
touch the ground. That’s the plan at least. “Can we do this?
Yeah, I think we can do this. I’m confident,” Doug McCuistion,
head of the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters, said
Saturday. “We have the A-plus team on this. They’ve done
everything possible to ensure success, but that risk still
exists.” Despite humanity’s fascination with Mars, the track
record for landing on it is less th