Mars Rover Landing a Success—What Happens Now?

At 1:31 a.m. ET Monday, the Curiosity rover's "seven minutes of terror"evaporated in a swirl of fine-grained soil as six aluminum wheels touched the red planet for the first time. NASA had nailed the riskiest Mars landing ever.

Now Curiosity's two-year search for signs of life begins, with the kind of extended stretch and warm-up you might expect after a cramped, yearlong flight—as detailed here in an excerpt for the new National Geographic e-bookMars Landing 2012 .... http://news.nationalgeographic.com