It was a modest test drive: moving forward 15 feet, turning in place 120 degrees, then backing up about 8 feet. The entire trip took about 16 minutes, with most of the time spent stopped as cameras took photographs of the progress.
But for the team behind Curiosity, the six-wheeled NASA rover that landed on Mars 17 days ago, the first tracks in the dust on Wednesday were an exciting milestone.
“It couldn’t be more important,” Peter C. Theisinger, the mission’s project manager, said at a post-drive news conference. “I mean, we built a rover. So unless the rover roves, we really haven’t accomplished anything.”
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