Safe landing

The robotic explorer Curiosity's daring plunge through the pink skies of Mars was more than perfect. It landed with spectacular style, said a NASA scientist, describing the first images of its mechanical gymnastics.

Minutes after the landing signal reached Earth at 10:32 p.m. PDT, 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.

At a budget-busting $2.5 billion, Curiosity is the priciest gamble yet, which scientists hope will pay off with a bonanza of discoveries and pave the way for astronaut landings.

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.

Read the complete story from The Associated Press