The lonely Curiosity rover is poised to get a companion on Mars in September 2016 -- so long as NASA's next mission, InSight, goes as planned.

Where Curiosity has been tasked with exploring the surface of Mars, a second rover is needed to probe its innards.

"We're really clueless about the interior," said NASA director of Planetary Science Jim Green.

And by 2016, us earthlings will be more than ready for a little Red Planet romance.

[themarysue]

The Mars Curiosity rover -- and its team -- get down in "NASA and We Know It."

[satire]

Nerd Nightly News:

• A first look at Pixar's new short film Partysaurus Rex.
• Curiosity transmitted this hi-res image back from Mars.
• The Red Dawn remake has an official poster.
• Chris Hardwick's appearance Wednesday night on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.
• A new app transforms your phone into a "burner".
• A 1/5th-size prototype of an amphibious tank.
• Spruce up your home with stained glass dice.

[image: twentytwowords]

Just in time for Curiosity's perfect 10 landing, we're granted a positively stellar LEGO Mindstorms facsimile, complete with camera and Bluetooth-operated crane arm.

If this was available for purchase, we could all play along with Curiosity at home. Oh well.

[mashable]

The Curiosity Rover made it to Mars late Sunday night, and so far all we've got is this single high-res photo.

But it was more than enough to send NASA engineers into ecstasy, since the Curiosity's landing sequence -- coined The Seven Minutes of Terror -- requires six vehicle configurations, 76 pyrotechnic devices, the largest supersonic parachute ever built, and more than 500,000 lines of code.

According to NASA administrator Charles Bolden, "new technologies never invented or attempted before were created for this journey," and that the odds for success were actually just 40 percent.

Curiosity, the most sophisticated Rover ever built is now on the surface of the red planet, where it will seek to answer age-old questions about whether or not life ever existed there on Mars or if the planet can sustain life in the future.

More photos to come, we can be sure of that.

[mashable]