- For other meanings of the term countdown, see Countdown (disambiguation).
A countdown is the backward counting to indicate the seconds remaining before an event, such as a launch, the start of a race, and New Years. The last ten seconds are usually counted down aloud "10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-Liftoff."
The "T minus Time" is the time before launch, e.g. "The countdown was held at T minus 5 minutes for 3 minutes and 40 seconds".
The first known use with respect to launching a rocket occurred in Fritz Lang's 1929 film Frau im Mond. In the film, after each number the words "seconds to go" was repeated.
The countdown is a inverse counting from a certain bigger number to a smaller one. Often this countdown starts at a bigger number until zero, but sometimes the countdown stops before reaching zero.
A example of countdown is the counting of time left to a bomb to explode.
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