An ambitious maneuver involving an enormous supersonic parachute and a rocket-powered sky crane safely delivered the one-ton, $2.5 billion dollar robot to the surface of Mars.
In this artist's rendering provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech, a 'sky crane' lowers the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover onto the surface of Mars. The mobile robot is designed to investigate Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life.
JPL-Caltech/NASA/AP
EnlargeA car-size NASA rover touched down on the Martian surface late Sunday night (Aug. 5), executing a stunning series of maneuvers that seem pulled from the pages of a sci-fi novel.
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Workers in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory cheered loudly when the Mars rover "Curiosity" landed successfully and sent back its first photos from the surface of the red planet. John Blackstone reports.News of the 1-ton?Curiosity rover's successful landing came in at 10:31 p.m. PDT Sunday (1:31 a.m. EDT and 0517 GMT Monday), though the robot actually touched down inside Mars' huge Gale Crater around 10:17 p.m. (It takes about 14 minutes for signals to travel from the Red Planet to Earth).
"Touchdown confirmed. We're safe on Mars!" a mission controller announced to deafening cheers here at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Rover team members leapt to their feet to hug and high-five each other.
Then, a few minutes later, Curiosity's first photo ? a fuzzy thumbnail showing one of the huge rover's six wheels on the Martian surface ? came down to Earth, sparking another eruption of emotion.
"It's the wheel! It's the wheel!" somebody exclaimed in mission control. [1st Images of Mars from Curiosity Rover (Video)]
Curiosity survived a harrowing and unprecedented journey to the Red Planet's surface. After hurtling into the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph late Sunday (21,000 kph), Curiosity's spacecraft deployed an enormous supersonic parachute to slow down to 200 mph (320 kph) or so. The vehicle then fired rockets to slow its descent further, to less than 2 mph (3.2 kph).
Then the craziness began.
A?rocket-powered sky crane?lowered Curiosity to the Martian surface on cables, then flew off and crash-landed intentionally a safe distance away after the rover's six wheels hit the red dirt. The ambitious maneuver capped a landing sequence that NASA officials have dubbed "seven minutes of terror."?
With the landing, the Curiosity rover wrapped up an eight-month voyage across 352 million miles to reach Mars, where the robot now faces an ambitious two-year mission.
Word of the touchdown came via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, which relayed signals from Curiosity to Earth. Curiosity couldn't ping Earth directly, because Mars' rotation took the rover out of contact with our planet just before it landed. [Photos: How Curiosity's Crazy Landing Works]
The successful landing is a huge moment for NASA and the future of robotic planetary exploration, which is imperiled by budget cuts. NASA is counting on Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission ? which is officially known as the Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL ? to generate excitement about the agency's exploration efforts and, perhaps, bring some of the lost funding back.
"We're on Mars again," NASA chief Charlie Bolden said just minutes after Curiosity touched down. "It doesn't get any better than this."
Assessing Martian habitability
Curiosity can now get to work. Its main task is to determine if the?Gale Crater?area is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life. It sports 10 scientific instruments to aid in this task, including a rock-zapping laser and gear that can identify organic compounds, the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it.
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