As a curious planet watches, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is continuing its mission on Mars. On Sunday, Curiosity collected its first sample of Martian soil. The sampling was not without some drama however, a bright object in the soil raised NASA's hackles, delaying the mission.

Mars may be the first planet in the solar system to have a robot for mayor. (Something that was already predicted by Reddit.) NASA's Curiosity rover just checked-in on Foursquare on Mars and, unless Opportunity gets its act in gear, could continue to check-in unopposed and win the coveted spot of mayor.

If a spaceship was leaving for Mars tomorrow, I'd want to be on it. There is no spaceship leaving for Mars — not tomorrow and not for a while — but, thanks to good ol' Curiosity, I can still watch videos like this and pretend I'm on my way down toward our ruddy planetary neighbor.

Like everything they build, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) designed Curiosity's Sky Crane landing system to work. But nothing is guaranteed in spaceflight. The team wouldn't know for sure whether the mission's entry, descent, and landing (or EDL) was successful until they got confirmation from the rover. The problem was that Curiosity's landing site in Gale Crater would be out of range at touchdown, so the team brought in a communications relay: the Mars Odyssey orbiter. It was a simple and obvious solution, except that Odyssey experienced its first ever malfunctions weeks before Curiosity's landing.