TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Last month, NASA posted a promotion video of sorts for the Curiosity Mars rover, which is set to land on Mars August 6th. The video is very good and if you’re at all interested in it, you should watch it.

If you’re curious about what the rover is going to do, here’s more:

But Gale is no ordinary crater. Over eons, thin layers of sediment have accumulated at its center, forming a lumpy, striated mountain that towers three miles high, so high that its peak crests above the lip of the crater. The mountain’s rocky layers make up a geologic time capsule, a fine-grained record of Martian history that stretches back more than a billion years. If we could examine those layers up close, we could look deep into the Martian past, perhaps deep enough to see what the planet was like when it had an atmosphere and liquid water.

And we recently sent a super-futuristic robot there to do just that.

I hope science teachers are planning on using this as a way to explore astronomy and science generally. Although I was already fascinated by space, the Mars Pathfinder mission was endlessly interesting and motivating to me in elementary school.