The Mars science rover Curiosity
landed on the Martian surface to begin a two-year mission
seeking evidence the Red Planet once hosted ingredients for life, NASA said.
Mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles
burst into applause and cheered as they received signals relayed by a
Mars orbiter confirming that the rover had survived a make-or-break
descent and touched down within its landing zone.
NASA described the feat as perhaps the most complex achieved in robotic spaceflight.
Moments later, Curiosity beamed back its first three images from the
Martian surface, one of them showing a wheel of the vehicle.
"I can't believe this. This is unbelievable," said Allen Chen, the deputy leader of the rover's descent and landing team.
The car-sized rover apparently came to rest at its planned destination
near the foot of a tall mountain rising from the floor of Gale Crater in
Mars' southern hemisphere, mission controllers said.
The $2.5
billion Curiosity project, formally called the Mars Science Laboratory,
is NASA's first astrobiology mission since the 1970s-era Viking probes.
The landing marks a major victory and milestone for a U.S. space agency
beleaguered by budget cuts and the recent loss of its 30-year-old space
shuttle program.
"It's an enormous step forward in planetary
exploration. Nobody has ever done anything like this," said John
Holdren, the top science advisor to President Barack Obama, who was
visiting JPL for the event. "It was an incredible performance."
The exact condition of the one-ton, six-wheeled, nuclear powered
vehicle upon its arrival could not be immediately ascertained.
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