Curiosity Rover

NASA is doing a nice job publicizing the Curiosity Rover on Mars.  It's fun to follow on Twitter @MarsCuriosity.  I will probably show the video of it's descent instead of a warm up problem while I'm checking homework someday early on in the year. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISmWAyQxqqs 

NASA has a lot of material using real world data for math problems, for example  

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/exploringmath/algebra1/Prob_ShuttleMassTime_detail.html

I've never used this stuff, but I hope to this year.  The Mars trip makes it fresh again for me, hopefully the students think so, too.