The Curiosity Rover landed in Mars's Gale Crater, with an assignment - as Engadget once explained - of "finally answering Bowie's nagging questions." (Is there life on Mars? Do you remember your president Nixon? Rebel Rebel ...how could they know?) But Gizmodo does wonder "why do the Mars rover's images look so bad?" Cripes, don't they have Instagram up there? The answer is "Two words: dust cap. All the cameras onboard Curiosity are covered with transparent dust caps." But soon the images will be much cooler. TUAW investigates claims that an iPhone 4S is actually more powerful that the Curiosity Rover: "It's true ....the iPhone 4S does have a much more powerful brain than the Curiosity rover, but it's a moot point. Engineers design products, whether they're mass market smartphones or one-off Mars rovers, to handle the conditions that they'll see in everyday usage. To quote Elton John, 'Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.' That delicate flower of an iPhone wouldn't last a minute on Mars." You think Samuel L. Jackson is getting gazpacho help from Siri on Mars? Think again, pal. TechCrunch notes that a recent Google Doodle, which ostensibly celebrates the Olympics, also secretly pays homage to all this Mars business because look up in the sky! Behind the javelin thrower! Viva science nerds! Engadget also lets us know about the Lego Mindstorms builders who have created a fully operational Lego model of Curiosity, and you know something is important once it's rendered in Lego bricks.

Besides interplanetary info, the Mars mission has given the world a new Internet character, Mohawk Guy. Explains Cosmic Log: "It's been a crazy 24 hours for flight director Bobak Ferdowsi, and not just because he and the rest of his team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory landed an SUV on Mars. Ferdowsi has catapulted to Internet fame -- thanks to his star-spangled Mohawk hairdo and the warm-hearted hotness he exuded during TV coverage of the Curiosity rover's landing. He's picked up 20,000-plus Twitter followers ... he's getting come-ons from fans of both sexes... A Tumblr tribute site has been created in his honor. And there's a widely distributed LOL picture with the caption, "Becomes an Internet sensation ... Too busy landing a robot on Mars to notice." Adds Seattle's Big Blog: "Turns out, the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory control room is tough place to be an attractive guy with an unusual haircut. No one wants to hear about how you just landed a car-sized space probe on another planet when you have a mohawk and a Hollywood smile." Mashable has an exclusive post game video interview with him here.

And speaking of viral memes (which is how they become viral memes after all), Boing Boing has proclaimed that this new video of an excited vintage train fan describing a vintage train may be classified as "the new Double Rainbow." Which is really saying something.