Curiosity Touchdown on Mars Confirmed

The Curiosity rover landed safely on Mars early this morning/late night, prompting whoops, and some tears, of joy and relief in NASA's mission control center.

"Touchdown confirmed. We are safe on the surface of Mars!" the team read out after receiving signals from the rover. 

After a journey of 354 million miles, the rover, which is much bigger and more complex than previous models, had land to in a new way that could never be fully tested on Earth leading to what control room staff described as "seven minutes of terror" before confirmation was received, notes the Washington Post.

Read more about the seven minutes of terror, and everything that went down during the landing in our in depth, easy to understand, and generally awesome and well written report here. 

See the first images from Mars here. 

Engineers work inside the Spaceflight Operations Facility prior to the landing of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover.