NASA: A six-wheeled American robot was successfully landed on the surface of Mars yesterday in what was a second major success for international Mars exploration in less than a fortnight (Europe's Mars Express spacecraft went into orbit around the planet on Christmas Day).
A US official said the world-wide effort now under way represented the most intensive Solar System exploration project to be undertaken since the Apollo programme landed men on the Moon in the 1960s.
The Mars Exploration rover - codenamed Spirit - landed flawlessly within 10 kilometres of its target point at the centre of Gusev Crater, an ancient impact basin the size of Munster which many scientists believe once contained a vast lake of water perhaps many hundreds of metres deep.
The first pictures from the surface appeared to confirm that Gusev does indeed look like a dried-up lake bed: "Spirit has shown us her new home, and it is a beautiful place," declared the chief mission scientist, Dr Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, New York. "We have landed at the scientific sweet spot - right where we wanted to be."
Scientists were reluctant to comment in detail on the first low resolution, black-and-white pictures because vastly more detail will be visible in the colour images that are expected to begin arriving back to Earth later today.
However, several experienced planetologists were struck by the absence of large boulders anywhere on the vast gently-rolling plain that sweeps to the horizon in all directions from the rover.
"This suggests the rocks that were thrown up in meteorite impacts were soft and friable," said one. "Which is certainly what you would expect if the landscape was formed in the presence of large amounts of water."
When pressed repeatedly by journalists, Dr Squyers said he would have to wait to see one of the rocks up close, but "if those are sedimentary rocks (i.e. most likely formed in water) then Bingo!"
Spirit is the first of two identical rovers dispatched to Mars to search for evidence of liquid water on the surface of Mars at some time in its history. The other robot - call-sign Opportunity - will land at another promising site on the other side of the planet on January 25th. Evidence of rocks that had formed in the presence of liquid water would be a major boost to theorists who believe that Mars might have supported primitive life forms in the past - or might even still do so today.
However, it may be next week before the science team gets a close-up view of any of the countless tantalising rocks littering the surface of Gusev Crater. Much of the rover's critical equipment is still folded origami-like into a protective landing shell and engineers here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will spend days laboriously checking out its systems before gingerly heading down the roll-out ramp and onto the surface.
"We now have a very valuable asset on the surface of Mars and we don't want to take any chances with it, said JPL director Dr Charles Elachi.
The chief scientist, Dr Squyres, took a congratulatory phone call early yesterday from the British scientist Prof Colin Pillinger, whose small Beagle-2 lander has not been heard from since it was due to land on Mars on Christmas Day.
It was delivered to the planet by the European Mars Express, and the "mother ship" is expected to make another attempt to contact the tiny robot on Wednesday. If Beagle is lost, however, this will not affect the mission of the main European spacecraft, which is to search for buried water deposits from orbit.
The Beagle-2 lander cost less than €60 million to build and launch. America's Mars Exploration rovers cost upwards of $800 million.
The Irish-American who heads the US space programme, NASA administrator Mr Sean O'Keeffe, said the investment in Mars exploration was about more than searching for life on another planet.
"The international Mars exploration effort has an enormous value here on Earth, too," he told The Irish Times. "We need new and exciting ways to inspire our young people and landings like the Spirit mission offer encouragement to a new generation to take up the challenges in engineering and science that will face us in the future".
Earlier, at a press conference, Mr O'Keeffe acknowledged the effect this latest success could have on morale within the troubled space agency - which is approaching the first anniversary of the Columbia accident in which seven astronauts died. "This is a big night for NASA," he told reporters. "We are back!"