The Internet's 5 Best Things on NASA's Curiosity Mars Lander

Get excited: the new Mars rover Curiosity is set to land early next week. And the Internet wants you to be prepared, circulating articles, explanations, and lots of videos, the highlights of which we've collected here: Why Do We Have Curiosity? Considering that we already have one working rover on the surface of the Red Planet, what’s with all the brouhaha over this one? To find out why we’re sending Curiosity to Mars, Ph.D Comics went to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to talk to scientists, ogle the full-sized replica of Curiosity, and learn about the new rover’s scientific instruments, which include, among other things, a rock-shooting laser. http://youtu.be/sSpfJeVpZSg Lasers Look for Life Laser and all, those scientific tools weigh in (on Earth’s surface at any rate) at almost 180 pounds, 16 times greater than the instruments that the older rovers carried. And many of them involve chemistry. The American Chemical ...