NASA's ambitious Curiosity rover has successfully landed on Mars. After a journey of 36 weeks and 352 million miles, at approximately 1.32AM ET, the one ton nuclear-powered rover touched the surface of Mars.
"We are wheels down on Mars!" was the official information from the mission control.
"Touchdown confirmed. We're safe on Mars!" rejoiced mission control commentator Allen Chen announced. Affirmation in place, the success was greeted with a roar of approval from the flight control team who then erupted in cheers, applause, and tears at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
In the last few days, researchers at NASA were high on anxiety due to the failure records of of previous Mars missions. The seven-minute descent was named as "seven minutes of terror" by NASA as the craft had to endure Mars' temperatures of 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit and the craft's increasing speeds of 13,000 mph.
"It's just absolutely incredible, it doesn't get any better than this," said NASA administrator Charles Bolden.
"It's a huge day for the nation, it's a huge day for all of our partners and it's a huge day for the American people," he said. "Everybody in the morning should be sticking their chests out, saying 'that's my rover on Mars.' because it belongs to all of us."
Curiosity will be searching for evidence of past climatic conditions that once supported microbial life on the Mars.
Scientists, however, urged that that this mission will be a slow one. Even though the mission has been funded for two years, the scientists believe that the operations may take some more time.
Check out the first image of Mars taken by the Curiosity (below).
