Curiosity, the new Mars Rover, is too big to land by bouncing along on airbags the way Spirit and Opportunity did. And since it couldn’t use a parachute in Mars’ thin atmosphere to slow it down enough, engineers at JPL came up with this hovercraft/sky crane method.

via Popular Science

Also, check out this great interview with NASA JPL’s Ashwin Vasavada over at Boing Boing.