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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 Mars science rover Curiosity safely landed on the Martian surface.
The robot, size of a small car, landed at 10:30 p.m. Pacific time on Sunday (August 5th; August 6th, 1:30 a.m. EDT Monday/0530 GMT).
Moments later, Curiosity beamed back its first three images from the Martian surface, one of them showing a wheel of the vehicle.
It will begin a two-year exploration seeking evidence the Red Planet once hosted key ingredients for life.
NASA described the feat as the most elaborate and risky achievement in robotic spaceflight.
The robotic lab sailed through space for more than eight months, covering 352 million miles (566 million km), before piercing Mars' atmosphere at 13,000 miles per hour, 17 times the speed of sound.
The $2.5 billion Curiosity project, formally called the Mars Science Laboratory, is NASA's first astrobiology mission since the 1970s-era Viking probes.
