From XKCD:
In case you didn't see why the period of time from Curiosity's entrance into Mars' atmosphere to when it touched down on the surface was labeled "Seven Minutes of Terror" by the NASA folks. The rover was too big and too heavy to land with jets. The crew was worried that the Mars dust that would be kicked up would damage some of the instruments. So with the jet pack hovering the last 50 feet or so above the surface, a skycrane lowered the rover on ropes to a soft landing. Once the jetpack recognized the rover had touched down, it cut the ropes and flew away so it wouldn't accidentally land on the rover. And all this was done based on the programming given to the lander well in advance because of the time delay for information from the lander to get back to earth. If there had been a problem, the lander would have crashed long before any corrections could be sent. Amazing!
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