[X] My Assistant

[MERovingian]

This morning I was remembering the MSL landing and how it came for me to be the three minutes of terror, and I was wondering how you all have lived that precious moment!

Here's what happened to me: I'm just back from living in Canada and I'm settling again in France, in an old 18th century house that I have fixed myself years ago. But with all the gear that I brought back from Montreal, I did install another set of plugs, these running on 110 volts like in Northern America, alongside the french plugs running on 220 volts. All this because I wasn't ready to give up my giant screen before coming back, for I had a plan for the 5th of August.
I set my Tv screen running on 110 onto my computer running on 220. I had the whole set up up and running the whole day on the sunday, it was all go for the EDL the morning after (MSL landed at 7.34 am, french time). The strange set up was working just fine.

Comes the 6th, 6.30 am I'm up and running, pushing (gently) my wife outta the door, off to work, have a nice day honey. Comes 7.00 and I have already left a message on my workplace answering machine, stating that I am very very malade and I cannot come to travail today!
All is good, the way is clear, the place is quiet, I start the French computer and the Canadian TV screen, everything is working smoothly, Nasa TV is on I'm in tune with California. I have the peanuts close by and the Mars bars and I start biting my nails diligently like for the MERs arrival 8 years before.

7.24 am "Curiosity should by now be feelling the first traces of the atmosphere and th..'

PLONK

Total black out. No more bloody elecricity in the bloody house!Panic onboard! My worst nightmare has come true: I have lost contact with MSL!!!The three minutes of terror have started!!

I jump out of my chair and run to the stairs to get ASAP to the fuse box in the garage. But in the 18th century they had the bad habit of putting huge beams of very very hard wood all over the place and I explode my head against one of them trying to get off the attic were I have set my study! I have just gotten an enormous Martian bump on my forehead, as red as Spirit's solar panels. I run downstairs. I put the electicity back on. I fly back up, still holding my head. I ripp off the TV screen and grabb my normal computer one. I have a proper fight with all the cables and I curse in French, English and Gaelic.
I start it all again. It is 7.26 and I am ten lights years away from making it on time or so it sems. The computer is running again, but I have lost the internet connection. I jump back onto the stairs to get to the broadband connector!

And I make it back right on time upstairs at the very moment the 7 minutes of terror have started at JPL, in UMSF and the rest of the world.

I was so glad today of learning of the good health of Curiosity! I have sustained much more damages during landing than this precious rover. For the next Nasa mission to Mars, I will have bandages close by instead of peanuts, I can tell you!

So, now is your turn: how did you live MSL's arrival??

[Marz]

... I curse in French, English and Gaelic...
I have sustained much more damages during landing than this precious rover.

LOL!! Thanks for sharing that story, and hope you are feeling better! Maybe your bad fortune caused everything else to run so smoothly in some tribute to universal balance of probabilities?

I started early by watching Mars slowly grow in the field of view of Eyes on the Solar System. The velocity began to pick up in pace with my blood pressure. CosmoQuest's landing party hangout began, with excellent, anxious, and witty commentary from a cast of stars (Emily, Scott, Jill, Pam, Phil, and many others). I had NASA TV on in the other room and after the simulation showed touchdown I was glued to the TV waiting for the final piece of good news (thanks, Odyssey, for letting me get to sleep only 3 hours late!). When the hazcam image downlinked, it was an awesome feeling. I'll feel much better after we start roving and my last insane worry of an ejected lens jammed in a wheel evaporates like some silly nightmare!