NASA's rover Curiosity successfully carried out a highly challenging landing on Mars early Monday, transmitting images back to Earth after traveling hundreds of millions of miles through space in order to explore the Red Planet.

Curiosity is supposed to last for two years on Mars, but it may operate longer -- after all, Spirit and Opportunity, which arrived on Mars in 2004, were each only supposed to last 90 Martian days. Spirit stopped communicating with NASA in 2010 after getting stuck in sand, and Opportunity is still going.

"You take what Mars gives you," said Squyres, also the lead scientist on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, which includes Spirit and Opportunity. "If we knew what we were going to find, it wouldn't be this much fun."


More. . .

NASA Mars Science Laboratory Webpage

Now that NASA's new Mars rover Curiosity is on the ground, the work begins — not just for the robot, but for many humans back on Earth.

It will take teams of dozens of scientists working around the clock to monitor and guide Curiosity as it explores its new home, Mars' Gale Crater.

"There are a lot of long hours, but the adrenaline will last for a while," Curiosity mission systems manager Michael Watkins said during a news briefing Tuesday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "These are the days that people worked five and 10 years for, going on right now."


More. . .