After a 36-week, 154-million-mile journey capped by a highly complex but flawlessly executed landing sequence, the rover Curiosity spent its first full day on Mars today at the dawn of a two-year $2.5 billion mission designed to determine if the Red Planet ever supported life and if it can do so in the future.

Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, from where the mission is being run for NASA, cheered and hugged each other when it was announced that Curiosity landed at 10:32 p.m. Pacific time Sunday near the foot of a mountain three miles tall and 96 miles in diameter inside Mars' Gale Crater. "Today, the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars,'' said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "Curiosity, the most sophisticated rover ever built, is now on the surface of the Red Planet, where it will seek to answer age-old questions about whether life ever existed on Mars -- or if the planet can sustain life in the future."