Good morning.
I hope that your Black Friday (which is now expanding into a Black Thursday, Black Friday deals week, etc.) is a good one. The poll and comment forum will be on hiatus this week, recognizing that readers will likely be out and about. If the year has been good to you (and I very much hope that it has been), it might not be a bad day to venture out, to find a deal here or there, boost a merchant or two, and generally observe the consumer frenzy. Enjoy.
There will be posts up throughout the weekend, patiently awaiting readers’ return from shopping expeditions.
If you venture out today, or if you’re returning from overnight shopping (!), you’ll find in Whitewater a breezy day with a high temperature of fifty-six.
Saturday is the date for the launch of NASA’s Mars rover, and embedded below is a live-stream window for tomorrow’s launch:
After eight years of planning, more than $600 million in cost overruns, and a two-year delay, NASA’sMars Science Laboratory is finally ready to launch.
Now you can watch the nuclear-powered, 1-ton rover — currently the largest machine that can feasibly land on the Red Planet — take off from Cape Canaveral and begin its journey to Mars.
Liftoff is currently scheduled for 10:02 a.m. EST on Saturday, Nov. 26. NASA TV offers HD streaming of the launch (above). But if acronym-filled technobabble is hard on your ears, tune in to one of our other favorite video streams on Spaceflight Now or Spacevidcast .