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The mission team also unveiled today a stunning 360-degree panorama of Curiosity's Gale Crater landing site, showing in crisp detail some of the landforms scientists want the six-wheeled robot to explore.

NASA's Curiosity rover on Wednesday left its first tracks on Mars, successfully completing a short test drive that showed it was ready to roll on longer treks for science investigations over the next two years.

NASA's Curiosity rover has zapped its first Martian rock, aiming its laser for the sake of science. During the target practice on Sunday, Curiosity fired 30 pulses at a nearby rock over a 10-second window, burning a small hole.

Curiosity phoned home throughout its daring and unprecedented landing sequence that night, giving its nervous handlers step-by-step status and health updates. The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter recorded some of this chatter, and now we can hear what Curiosity had to say.

Scientists have located a galaxy that gives births to more stars in a day than ours does in a year. Astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-Ray telescope to spot this distant gigantic galaxy creating about 740 new stars a year. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy spawns just about one new star each year.

This week's arrival of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity set the stage for a potentially game-changing quest to learn whether the planet most like Earth ever had a shot at developing life, but follow-up missions exist only on drawing boards.

NASA's rover carries a sophisticated weather station offering data on the Red Planet's environment that astronauts might one day encounter.

Only 20 people have qualified for the mentally grueling job of driving the fully loaded Curiosity while living essentially sequestered on Mars time. The San Gabriel Mountains rise over a rough patch of sun-baked volcanic boulders, dusty flagstones and earthen slopes.

NASA's Curiosity rover has beamed back its first color photo from the ancient crater where it landed on Mars and a video showing the last 2 1/2 minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the Martian atmosphere, a sneak peek of a spacecraft landing on another world.

Up in the stars, history was made, and down here on Earth, a new star was born: Bobak Ferdowski, a.k.a “Mohawk Guy,” the mission controller for the NASA Mars Curiosity Landing who is attracting plenty of attention for his unusual style. Here's why Ferdowski has become an insta-celebrity...