One Tonne Robot Lands on Mars

One giant leap was made in the exploration of Mars today, as Nasa landed a one-tonne vehicle on the Red Planet. The robot is named Curiosity and will spend at least the next two years exploring the planet and sending back photos.

The landing this morning marked the completion of the first stage after 10 years of hard work, and the facts and figures are pretty remarkable. The project and 10-foot long robot will cost an estimated $2.5billion in total. Mars is 570 million km from Earth and Curiosity had to slow from 20,000km/h to just 0.6m/s in the space of seven minutes when entering Mars' atmosphere.

Barack Obama's chief science advisor, John Hodren made it clear quite how important the mission is when he explained:

"Landing the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity on the Red Planet was by any measure the most challenging mission ever attempted in the history of planetary exploration."

Within minutes of landing, Nasa were receiving the first low-resolution images from the robot (below), with much more detailed, colour images expected in the next few days. As well as sending back photos, Curiosity will be investigating an area called the Gale Crater. It will be taking samples and exploring rocks as it goes along, hoping to find evidence that very basic life may once have lived on Mars.

However, with the mission expected to last at least two years, and possibly as long as a decade, Nasa have warned that we shouldn't expect any grand results too soon. So don't hold your breath!

The first image sent back from Mars

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