Mars rover Curiosity landing brings space exploration to Twitter

I'm old enough to remember sitting in front of our black and white TV for hours transfixed by the first manned landing on the moon in 1969. I saw the blurry pictures of Neil Armstrong's first steps and knew I was sharing that experience with millions of people worldwide who were watching it live.

Historic. Unforgettable. Yeah, but the Eagle didn't have its own Twitter feed.

When Curiosity, the new super-sized Mars rover, landed on the Red Planet late Sunday night (Pacific time), first word came via Twitter.

"I'm safely on the surface of Mars," Curiosity tweeted after entry into the planet's atmosphere, followed by the most complex landing sequence in the history of space exploration. "GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!! #MSL."

The US$2.5-billion Mars mission landed the compact car-sized rover via a huge parachute that slowed the craft from supersonic speeds to the point where retro rockets could fire, allowing the spacecraft to hover above the ground and lower one-ton Curiosity on a sling.

While NASA's mission team celebrated, the web shared the excitement in ways none of us could have imagined back in '69.

Riffing on the world's other big-budget blowout in London, tapcdn came up with this cheeky image. Hopefully, there won't be a nasty letter from Olympic lawyers.

As Curiosity touched down, @Oreo tweeted its special tasty tribute to the successful landing, which quickly when viral.

But Curiosity's own tweets, which have drawn almost 700,000 followers, have given earthbound spectators interaction with the mission we could never have dreamed of when Apollo 11 made its historic visit to the moon.

The perilous entry into the Martian atmosphere, dubbed "seven minutes of terror," was chronicled on @MarsCuriosity, followed by the triumphant word of the successful landing.

"Instagram or it never happened," tweeted Philip Paschke (@ppaschke), shortly after the landing.

"You asked for pics from my trip. Here you go!," Curiosity tweeted back. "My 1st look (of many to come) of my new home ... MARS! #MSL pic.twitter.com/894ouNJt"

Curiosity also promised to tweet colour shots once it was fully activated but meanwhile offered a view its own landing taken from one of NASA's satellites orbiting Mars.

[ Related: See rover's first photos from Mars ]

Clearly, with the world no longer sitting glued to TV sets to watch space missions and agencies like NASA struggling for funding, using social media such as Twitter to engage a new generation in the adventure of space exploration offers some hope of sustaining support for the effort.