By design, the descent and landing of the one-ton mobile robot laboratory, scheduled to occur at approximately 1:31 a.m.

WSJ: NASA's Robot Lab Curiosity Nears Mars

In a nutshell, we purchased the domain name LasVegasWebDesign.com and redirected it to a landing page for Web design services targeting the area.

FORBES: Can You Buy Your Way To The Top Of Organic Search Results?

Thanks to this sustained investment, myriad engineering challenges have been overcome that previously precluded a single aircraft design from taking-off and landing like helicopters and flying horizontally like conventional airplanes.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy

He strongly believes private organisations will help raise awareness and hopefully discover or design some technology which will help future teams reach their goal of landing on Mars.

BBC: Applicants wanted for a one-way ticket to Mars

Europe is keen to have a go at touching down on Mars and the current baseline design for the orbiter mission calls for a 600kg entry, descent and landing module.

BBC: Esa-Nasa Mars missions' race against clock

"We considered over 30 designs and believe that the QSST is the only design that meets all the desired requirements including range, take-off and landing field length, take-off noise, emissions and sufficiently low sonic boom characteristics to enable supersonic flight over land, " he told CNN.

CNN: Bang goes the sonic boom

"You probably would not damage your bumper if you hit a car at this speed, " said landing-system engineer Devin Kipp at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who helped design the parachute.

WSJ: Mars Mission Seeks a Happy Landing

The B-1B has a "variable-geometry" or swing-wing design: The wings are swept forwards, almost at right angles to the body, for take-off and landing and cruising.

BBC: Profile: B-1 bomber