NASA’s third-generation rover Curiosity landed on Mars on Monday after an eight-month journey in space.

The one-ton, three-meter-long Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft landed in the Gale Crater and promptly took three photos of Mars' surface and transmitted them back to Earth.

The U.S. injected two-and-a-half billion dollars into the latest robotic space probe mission to Mars.

Curiosity will check its equipment for a week before launching a two-year mission aimed at unraveling the mysteries of living organisms on Mars.