Curiosity's successful landing: Falling onto Mars This is a picture of America's latest Mars rover, Curiosity, suspended beneath its parachute as it descends towards its landing site in Gale crater. It was taken by a camera on board Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a craft that has been orbiting Mars since 2006. Curiosity's landing was famously complicated. It required aerobraking, parachutes, rocket motors, cables and explosives. In the end, everything worked perfectly, and the rover touched down at 5.32am, Universal Time, on August 6th, exactly as planned. It has already sent back a few low-resolution, black-and-white pictures of its surroundings. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, from which it is being controlled, will spend the next few days making sure that everything is working properly before sending it on a journey across the crater in search of signs that Mars might once have experienced conditions favourable to the development of life.