“We Are on Mars Again. It’s a Great Day.”
Precisely on time and target, NASA’s Curiosity rover touched down safely on Mars Monday to begin an ambitious two-year trek through a mountainous crater that promises to reveal whether the red planet was ever hospitable to life.
Almost immediately upon landing early Monday, the Curiosity craft transmitted to Earth a series of photographs showing its own wheels safely on the surface of Gale Crater near the equator of Mars.