It’s logical that they would have it in Houston, probably over on Florida’s ‘Space Coast’, and maybe in the area around JPL, but the rest of the nation needs broadband to see it.

I’m so old I remember when you could watch these events on broadcast television.

The heavier gravity, atmosphere, and command delay because of distance make this an iffy proposition. Hope is what we are left with.

It is my understanding that the complete vehicle will descend to a very slow approach about 20m from the surface (‘m’ is meters here), then winch the rover down the rest of the way on cables, and finally explosively detach the cables and fly away. This was the only way they thought they had a chance of landing a rover far heavier than anything they’ve landed on Mars before.

I have hope, but not confidence: as their scoreboard shows, so far in Mars landings, it’s Mars 24, Earth 15. This ain’t easy!

This is one of the reasons no one is discussing a manned mission. There is enough of an atmosphere on Mars to make things ‘very interesting’, and we don’t have enough information to predict the weather in more than very general terms.

Apparently part of the landing system is a device that will land and then attempt to take off after the rover is on the ground. If that is successful, a manned mission is much closer.