Curiosity Lands On Mars: 10 Amazing Facts

Curiosity's Mars Mission

More that eight months after taking off from Cape Canaveral, NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars over the weekend to begin a two-year mission exploring and probing the Red Planet.

Curiosity already is sending back its first grainy black-and-white images of Mars, taken through the fish-eye lens of its hazard-avoidance cameras. And NASA on Monday released a photograph taken from its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on board the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter as the rover drifted downward, suspended by a parachute, on its last leg of the flight.

When Curiosity landed on Mars on Monday, Aug. 6, NASA administrator Charles Bolden referred to it as a "harrowing landing" and President Obama called it "an unprecedented feat of technology." Following are 10 facts that help explain why the occasion was so historic.