NASA's Mars Exploration Rover, Curiosity, infiltrates Xbox Live, a popular online gaming platform.
NASA's all hyped up about Curiosity's impending landing on Mars, and who could blame them? With the EDL engineers sweating bullets in anticipation, it's no wonder they've gone and released a pulse-pounding video presentation to keep cool.
But that's not all. In a bid to ramp up the mission's publicity, NASA's dropped a new Xbox Live Kinect game today – Mars Rover Landing. This bad boy brings those nerves-jangling seven minutes slap-bang into your living room.
I took it for a spin out of sheer curiosity, and fancied it pretty neat. It's a motion-controlled nod to the classic Lunar Lander for Atari, with you guiding the rover through each stage of its descent onto Martian soil.
First off, you'll shimmy side to side, take a few steps forward and back to keep the heat shield on track as it slips into Mars' atmosphere. Once through the fiery embrace of Mars, you'll need to jettison the heat shield, let go of the back shell, and pull the cord on the parachute. It's all done by waving your hands like some sort of Martian magician.
Finally, you'll need to finesse the rocket thrusters of the "back shell powered descent vehicle" using your hands, while keeping Curiosity suspended from its tethers, and then gently coax it to its designated spot. Time's tight, though, as there's limited fuel.
It ain't rocket science, but the game grades you on things like landing precision and structural integrity. I had a go a few times just to see if I could do better, so there's some replay value there, I guess.
To be clear, Mars Rover Landing ain't no simulation of what's truly gonna happen. Maybe it's like NASA's earlier space game, Moonbase Alpha, more of an interactive presentation than an accurate replication of the Curiosity rover's landing sequence. No one's gonna be remotely controlling anything via Kinect, anyway.
But if you've got an Xbox 360 and a Kinect, Mars Rover Landing is definitely worth a gander. It's not here to recreate the true landing to a T, but it gives you an engaging taste of what those seven minutes of landing on Mars entail.
Science and technology merge in NASA's new Xbox Live Kinect game, Mars Rover Landing. This gadget-driven simulation of the Curiosity rover's descent onto Martian soil offers a thrilling space-and-astronomy experience, letting players guide the rover through various stages of its landing sequence.
