NASA Mars Curiosity Landing - Spine Chilling!

The video includes from just before atmospheric interface to the first hazcam images. Click "Show more" in the video description for explanations of control room chatter.

EDL - Entry, descent and landing. This is both the flight maneuver itself and the name of the team in the control room.

"Tones" and "heartbeats" are basic signals sent directly to Earth from the spacecraft. As the vehicle enters the crater, the line of sight from Earth is broken and there are no more tones. Tones are sent to report specific events. Heartbeats simply say that things are still okay.

"Odyssey" refers to an older satellite in orbit of Mars that is relaying flight information (telemetry) during descent and is the link that relays hazcam images after the landing.

"MRO" (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) is another Mars-orbiting satellite that is monitoring the flight. MRO is collecting data during descent that will be relayed back to Earth at a later time. MRO also has the most powerful telescopic camera ever flown on a deep space mission (HiRISE) and it will attempt to photograph the rover spacecraft while on its parachute and pinpoint the exact landing site. HiRISE images were used to select the landing site and plan preliminary traverse routes for the rover. Stereo, high-resolution, and color HiRISE images continue to support the rover mission.

"OD 227/228 Runout" refers to the latest "orbital determination" models. This is the flight dynamics group's best understanding of the trajectory prior to contact with the martian atmosphere. At this point in the flight, it was too late to alter the on-board flight controls from Earth, but the latest OD is useful for comparing telemetry to the expected flight during the descent.

"The divert" is a maneuver that happens a few seconds after separation from the back-shell (which is pulled back and away from the descent stage by the main parachute). The separated back-shell and parachute continue on their own descent trailing behind the now-released rocket-powered descent stage. If the descent stage simply fired its rockets to slow down, it would be overtaken and clobbered from behind by the back-shell and parachute (that isn't slowing down). Instead the sequence waits a few seconds for the descent stage (now falling faster than the back-shell and parachute) to build up some distance. And then, with room to maneuver, the divert shifts the flight of Curiosity off to the side by about 100 yards to avoid a potential collision with the back-shell and parachute.

"Roll reversal 1 and 2" are automated maneuvers where the vehicle turns to the left and right during descent to eat up or add downrange distance. Bigger turns are used if the vehicle is overshooting the landing site and needs to use up entry speed in less total downrange distance, smaller turns if it needs to land "longer." The Space Shuttle also did these sorts of turns to align with its landing site.

Curiosity was sitting on the ground for an agonizing 17 seconds before the team was certain of success. The EDL lead (Dr. Steltzner, pacing back and forth) was waiting to hear three confirmations:

1. The rover felt the gravity of Mars in the down direction (and therefore was sitting properly on all six wheels) "Tango Delta Nominal" = Touch Down was felt with the expected sensor readings inside the wheel suspension systems.
2. The communications with the sky crane were lost, and the unwound sky crane cables were no longer attached to the rover. (A bunch of overlapping chatter saying that telemetry from the descent stage has been lost and the knife mechanism to cut the cables has fired).
3. Curiosity's radio was still transmitting (which meant that the descent stage was flying away and had not crashed on top of the rover). "UHF is good."