The photograph above, which was taken from a spacecraft called Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter during Phoenix's descent, shows how it first deployed a parachute to slow itself.
Repeating and videotaping these actions in controlled conditions, he said, makes it possible to look more carefully at, for example, exactly how a bird tilts its wings to slow itself when landing, or how birds corner.
For more than six years, Messenger took a circuitous route through the inner solar system, making flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury, to slow itself down enough to enter orbit around Mercury.
During the rocket firing, to slow itself into orbit, Cassini made what will be its closest approach to Saturn, passing within 12,800 miles of the planet's cloud tops.
It works well on that level, although the game slows itself down by making you wander aimlessly rather than supplying you with a map, and by preventing you from skipping lengthy animated sequences that are only fun the first time.
In fact, the number of warnings was such that the plane's computers could not initially make an accurate calculation of whether the jet — still laden with fuel and 50 tons over its maximum landing weight — would be able to slow itself enough on landing to avoid overshooting the end of the runway.
Two benchmark examples of classical music video, Henri-Georges Clouzot's film of Karajan leading the Verdi Requiem (1967, Deutsche Grammophon) and Bruno Monsaingeon's "Glenn Gould: The Alchemist" (1974, EMI), show how the camera can slow itself to a thoughtful, contemplative gaze that actually takes in what's happening.
And when you bring it down it will, for the most part, slow itself down.
As for its long tail, the dino probably used it to slow itself down when descending, thus avoiding crash landings.
