Congratulations NASA: Spirit has landed!

It’s official: Spirit (the first of two rovers sent to Mars) has landed successfully!

MSNBC: NASA rover sends snapshots from Mars

The first of NASA’s two Mars rovers landed safely on an open stretch within Gusev Crater on Saturday night and sent back screenfuls of black-and-white images, marking a successful start to NASA’s first ground-level exploration of the Red Planet in more than six years.

FOXNews: NASA Rover Lands on Mars, Begins Transmitting Photos

Within hours it began sending back photos of the Red Planet. Among the first was a tiny black and white image showing a sundial on the rover. Another showed the Martian horizon and portions of the lander.

Susan Kitchens was blogging the event live from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium at the Planetary Society’s “Wild About Mars” event. Part one contained all the pre-landing events and addresses, and part two covers the landing.

8:32 deceleration going as expected. parachute deployment soon w/in a minute.

1000+ mph…. 300 mph. Parachute detected! applause here in the room….

heat shields off! altitude 8000’ feet

airbag in approx 25 seconds.

we got radar lock (YES!)

retro rocket firing.. await word to confirm!

awaiting word that we are on the ground. wsigns of bouncing on the surface!!!!!!

applause!!!!!!! we got bouncing word. we heard we do not have signal from spacecraft. Rolling….spacecraft has to survive all boucning for landing to be a success…

vehicle could bounce and roll up to a kilometer from its initial impact point. Awaiting word.

the way that canberra is processing might be producing noise that makes it hard to hear actual signal. [heh. signal? noise? say it ain’t so!]

We are trying to get direct signal, and will keep doing so until earthset. Then there are two orbiting vehicles that can pick up signal and then relay it on to us. Donna is telling us about Pathfinder’s lack of telemetry, and the fact that this mission has lots of telemetry, so we’ve got lots of data.

If it bouncing around, and landed in a position so that the antenna is in right position. Bags have to deflate, and the petals open (and right themselves)

May have a data packet that might indicate someething from vehicle, but need a bit more time. Positive confirmation of signal. We’re down! (applause here, but no reaction in teh control room onscreen)

Awaiting semaphor tones from landed vehicle. That’ll take a lotta processing to come across.

Stanford University reports that it might have received signal from Rover independenbly

SIGNAL!! Applause. applause applause and handshakes. (applause here too! lots.)

Lots of very relieved, happy people onscren at flight control.

And, of course, there are lots more links available in this /. thread, and this Google News query.

Meanwhile, the Stardust comet-chasing mission is also successfully sending back images from the Wild 2 comet!

NASA on Saturday was hoping to receive the last of dozens of close-up photographs a spacecraft took of a distant comet, but officials did not expect to release more photos to the public until Monday.

The Stardust spacecraft took 72 images of the dark nucleus of comet Wild 2 during a daring flyby Friday that occurred 242 million miles from Earth. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration hoped to receive the last of the black-and-white images by late Saturday.

NASA so far has released a single black-and-white photo of the comet nucleus, thought to be just 3.3 miles across. It showed what looked like a giant frozen meatball pocked with sinkholes.

Too, too cool.