With the rover now safely on the surface of the Red Planet, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory begins its one-Martian-year (98-week) mission of discovery and exploration

With the most advanced Mars rover Curiosity’s successful landing on the planet, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has achieved a major milestone in its search for evidence of existence of microbial life on the Red Planet. The one-tonne rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down on Mars, ending a 36-week flight and the beginning of two-years of investigation.

According to NASA, Curiosity landed at 10:32 p.m. on August 5, PDT (1:32 on August 6, EDT), near the foot of a mountain five km tall inside Gale Crater, 155 km in diameter. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway manoeuvre of the rocket backpack.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, “Today, the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars. Curiosity, the most sophisticated rover ever built, is now on the surface of the Red Planet, where it will seek to answer age-old questions about whether life ever existed on Mars – or if the planet can sustain life in the future.

“This is an amazing achievement, made possible by a team of scientists and engineers from around the world and led by the extraordinary men and women of NASA and our Jet Propulsion Laboratory. President Obama has laid out a bold vision for sending humans to Mars in the mid-2030s, and today’s landing marks a significant step toward achieving this goal.”

Confirmation of Curiosity’s successful landing came in communications relayed by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter and received by the Canberra, Australia, antenna station of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

“The Seven Minutes of Terror has turned into the Seven Minutes of Triumph,” said NASA Associate Administrator for Science John Grunsfeld. “My immense joy in the success of this mission is matched only by the overwhelming pride, I feel for the women and men of the mission’s team.”

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking the rocks elemental composition from a distance. Later in the mission, the rover will use a drill and scoop at the end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into analytical laboratory instruments inside the rover.

To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site places the rover within driving distance to layers of the crater’s interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history.

The mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

With Curiosity now safely on the surface of the Red Planet, descent and landing in Gale Crater, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory begins its one-Martian-year (98-week) mission of discovery and exploration.

Curiosity landed facing east-southeast within Gale Crater, with a heading of 112.7 degrees (plus or minus five degrees), and a few degrees of tilt. A Sol 1 overpass by Mars Odyssey will provide additional information on Curiosity’s position and additional imagery. A first look at some colour images taken just before landing by MSL’s Mars Descent Imager also provided additional information on the rover’s precise location.