Curiosity lands on Mars

The Curiosity rover is NASA's latest major mission to Mars - a nuclear-powered robot car that will use lasers to search for signs of life in the soil of our neighbouring planet. In a show of technological wizardry, the robotic explorer blazed through the skies of Mars, steering itself to a gentle landing inside a giant crater for the most ambitious dig yet into the red planet's past.

This is one of the first images it transmitted back to Earth after landing at around 5.30am GMT today - a picture of the spacecraft's own shadow on the Martian soil, taken with the rover's low-resolution "Hazard-Avoidance" cameras.