7 minutes of terror with twitter & X-box!

Those of you who are clued on the NASA’s Mars Curiosity mission would have comprehended, but for others, we are talking about Curiosity’s descent to Mars and the 7 minutes that it took for curiosity to plunge from Mars atmosphere to the ground (and that it slowed down from about 13000MPH to almost zero in the same duration)!

However the highlight of this post is about the commendable work NASA has done to arouse interest, enthusiasm and engagement in the masses across the world, especially the teachers and student communities around the MARS exploration!

NASA and Microsoft created a game for XBOX which is all about trying one’s hand at landing the Rover on Mars. Users say it’s a uniquely enjoyable way to use the Kinect to experience the landing.

The game is available for free here

Apart from the game that created immense engagement and buzz; NASA also leveraged other sociaL channels, the main being twitter.

The followers on the @MarsCuriosity twitter account exceeds 1million and has over 1200 tweets!

In the recent few days the average number of tweets is hovering around 1 tweet every 5-6 hours! That’s enough to keep the excitement alive.

And not just that the tweets cary pics and videos which make the experience come alive so much more.

NASA also leverages ustream to broadcast live and recorded events. For e.g. Today (Aug 22nd, 2012) you can get a LIVE UPDATE on Mars Rover Gale crater exploration.Click here to view

Not to forget Youtube, which is heavily populated by NASA and you can find volumes of videos around Mars and other stuff. Talking about Kids here is an interesting animation created on www.thewhiztimes.com

Everything converges to buzz and UGC that is created out of this, and what better testimonial than Barrack Obama who said that he would check with his team on whether it makes sense to sport a Mohawk hair style as sported by the flight director: Bobak Ferdowski! (Read a nice report on Washington Post here:)

As we end this story here is a link for you to check out an interactive panoramic view of Mars. Click to enjoy. (Watch this in full-screen)

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