4 ways of looking at the Curiosity rover's historic landing

Wheels are down! NASA's multi-billion dollar space lab will finally begin its mission to determine if life on Mars ever existed. Here's what its successful touch-down means

Not wanting to waste any time, NASA's overachieving Curiosity rover beams back images of Mars' surface, with its shadow center, using a "fisheye" wide angle lens.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA's $2.5 billion Curiosity rover "flawlessly" touched down on Mars late Sunday — no small feat, considering that 60 percent of space missions to Mars fail when it's time to enter the Red Planet's brutal atmosphere. The high-risk landing involved a four-step process that NASA scientists affectionately branded "Seven Minutes of Terror," requiring the vessel containing the car-sized, nuclear-powered lab to slow from 13,000 mph to a full stop in a few short minutes. (Watch NASA's terrifying animation here.) Now the Curiosity, which will spend the next two years searching for evidence of life on Mars, is beaming back high-res images of the dusty planet's surface, and commentators are calling the mission a major victory for the space program. What does Curiosity's triumphant touch-down mean? Here, four interpretations:

1. It makes NASA cool again

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