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Comment by Pfhreak | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have an idea of when this will occur? This article says 15:31, but provides no timezone. The wikipedia page says 05:31 UTC. I assumed the article is written by someone at NASA from the author tag "JULY 11, 2012 by WILLIAM in NASA" which suggests they are putting times in ETC...

Edit: Further research shows the JPL saying 'just after ten pm, PST' which is in line with the 05:31 UTC touchdown.

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There's a countdown timer on the JPL page if that helps. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

Note that it lands on August 6th "GMT" but it lands just after 10PM on the west coast on Sunday the 5th. That's why I'm having a "Welcome to Mars!" party that day. Drinks, snacks, and we'll watch the landing live on big screen TV courtesy of the NASA TV channel.

Just after 10PM? Wikipedia gives the landing time as approximately 05:31 UTC August 6th, which is 1:31 AM EDT.

I'd like to be wrong, since I'd like to stay up and watch, but I have work in the morning :(

Also, I expect there will be quite some delay between actual landing and confirmation received by NASA, given Mars' distance from Earth.

Aye, sorry that your EDT, in PDT its 10:31 PM, and the 'fun' starts just after 10 (as in I believe the last big retro burn is around 10 and the final descent begins) now the telemetry from that maneuver will let us know if there is a chance it will make it (did you say 3000 "feet" per second or "meters" per second?)

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