A little over an hour ago, the first of two NASA/JPL Mars Exploration Rover spacecraft bounced to a successful landing on the surface of Mars; you can find the relevant links at the JPL web site.

Three cheers for the MER development and flight teams; as a fellow JPLer I know how hard they worked to make this happen. I’d also like to congratulate the Deep Space Mission System operators who set up the communications channel that let us confirm that Spirit is alive and well–they don’t get a lot of news coverage, but they are under just as much pressure as everyone else involved.

One successfully down; one to go.