Jubilation at safe Mars landing

A £1.6 billion one-ton robot rover the size of a small car has landed safely on Mars amid scenes of wild jubilation on Earth.

The six-wheeled rover Curiosity was lowered to the Martian surface on three nylon tethers suspended from a hovering "sky crane" firing retro rockets.

It was the most daring, complex and difficult robotic space mission ever attempted. Tense mission controllers at the American space agency Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California erupted in a spontaneous outpouring of emotion when they heard the message: "Touchdown confirmed".

Men and women, many of whom had devoted years of their lives to the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, whooped, punched the air, cheered, clapped and hugged.

Nasa administrator Charles Bolden said: "Today, the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars."

The radio signal confirming that the rover had landed safely arrived on Earth at 06.32am, UK time. For the next 98 weeks - the length of one Martian year - Curiosity will explore a large Martian crater that billions of years ago may have been filled with water. The nuclear-powered rover is bristling with sophisticated technology designed to discover if the planet may once have supported life.

Two British scientists are at JPL headquarters in Pasadena leading teams of experts who will pore over the images and data sent back by the rover.

One of them, Professor Sanjeev Gupta, from Imperial College London, said: "Now that the MSL has landed we can get to grips with some remarkable science."

Colleague Dr John Bridges, from the University of Leicester, said: "I hope the effective combination in MSL of science objectives and space engineering will point the way towards more exploration of the solar system and technological innovations."

Curiosity's target was Gale Crater, near the Martian equator, which bears geological evidence of water including what appears to be a large lake bed. The rover landed precisely where the scientists wanted, at the foot of Mount Sharp - a 5.5 kilometre-high peak in the centre of the crater with clay deposits around its base.