This NASA handout image obtained on August 1, 2012 shows an artist's conception of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life.
NASA has successfully landed a 2.5-billion-dollar Mars rover on the surface of the Red Planet in one of the most daring space missions.
The Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover traveled over 567 million kilometers to reach the Red Planet since its launch last November.
Dusty images sent by the rover on Monday confirmed the arrival of the car-sized one-ton vehicle, which is designed to study signs of life existence in Mars during a two-year mission.
The rover, the first advanced mobile science laboratory sent to distant world, is packed with sophisticated chemistry and geology instruments that can analyze samples of soil, rock and atmosphere on the spot and beam results back to Earth.
US President Barack Obama hailed the Curiosity rover as "an unprecedented feat of technology."
"It's an enormous step forward in planetary exploration. Nobody has ever done anything like this," said John Holdren, the top science advisor to Obama, who was visiting the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles for the event.
NASA says it is one of the most complex, audacious landings of a spacecraft ever made on another planet.