Ray Bradbury probably would have been pleased.
Wednesday, on what would have been the author's 92nd birthday, the Martian rover Curiosity left tire tracks on the Red Planet, having successfully driven over the firm terrain for almost five minutes.
Click here for JPL's photo gallery of the first drive.
Engineers hosting a news conference at said Curiosity's landing spot on Mars will be named Bradbury Landing. The influential author died earlier this year.
"This was not a difficult choice for the science team," Michael Meyer, NASA program scientist for Curiosity, said during the morning news conference. "Many of us and millions of other readers were inspired in our lives by stories Ray Bradbury wrote to dream of the possibility of life on Mars."
