NASA's Phoenix Mars lander will drop onto the Red Planet's surface on May 25. JPL has put together a very cool video with animations and interviews with engineers about what this portable lab will go through on its way down. This is very well done (even if one guy talks about friction with the atmosphere, when really it's compression of the air on Mars that slows the probe down), and gives you a real sense of why landing on Mars is hard. They even high a High Def version (but it's 187Mb!). I think it's fantastic that folks at NASA (or at least JPL) understand that it's stuff like this that gets people excited, and kudos for them on putting it online. But now if they would just allow embedding it! I couldn't figure out how to do it. If someone else can, let me know, and I'll plop it in here. But I can embed the one on YouTube! Thanks commenters!
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