In a show of technological wizardry, the robotic explorer Curiosity blazed through the pink skies of Mars, steering itself to a gentle landing inside a giant crater for the most ambitious dig yet into the red planet's past. Cheers and applause echoed through the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory late Sunday after the most high-tech interplanetary rover ever built signaled it had survived a harrowing plunge through the thin Mars atmosphere, according to a report of the Associated Press. "Touchdown confirmed," said engineer Allen Chen. "We're safe on Mars." Minutes after the landing signal reached Earth at 10:32 p.m. PDT (0532 GMT), Curiosity beamed back the first black-and-white pictures from inside the crater showing its wheel and its shadow, cast by the afternoon sun. "We landed in a nice flat spot. Beautiful, really beautiful," said engineer Adam Steltzner, who led the team that devised the tricky landing routine. It was NASA's seventh landing on Earth's neighbor; many other attempts by the U.S. and other countries to zip past, circle or set down on Mars have gone awry. The arrival was an engineering tour de force, debuting never-before-tried acrobatics packed into "seven minutes of terror" as Curiosity sliced through the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph (21,000 kph). In a Hollywood-style finish, cables delicately lowered the rover to the ground at a snail-paced 2 mph (3 kph). A video camera was set to capture the most dramatic moments - which would give earthlings their first glimpse of a touchdown on another world. "The wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars," said NASA chief Charles Bolden. President Barack Obama lauded the landing in a statement, calling it "an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future." The voyage to Mars took more than eight months and spanned 352 million miles (566 million kilometers).
