On Monday, NASA unveiled a new video game called “Mars Rover Landing.” The Xbox Live game was produced in collaboration with Microsoft and utilizes the Xbox 360′s Kinect motion sensor.
Screenshot of “Mars Rover Landing.” CREDIT: Microsoft/Smoking Gun Interactive
“Mars Rover Landing” allows players to take control of Curiosity’s spacecraft as it streaks through the Red Planet’s atmosphere on a harrowing journey that mission engineers have dubbed “seven minutes of terror.”
At the end, a rocket-powered sky crane lowers the rover to the Martian surface on cables, then flies off to crash-land intentionally a safe distance away.
“Families can get a taste of the daring that’s involved in this, just landing this mission on the surface,” Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, told reporters today. “It’s going to be very similar to the way the team actually is going to do that.”
It is free and available to download from the Xbox Live Marketplace and Kinect Central.
(Source: SPACE.com)
