Pasadena, California: Nasa’s latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape.

It opened a window into the trip itself, from video footage of the landing to a photo of the rover hanging by a parachute to a shot of discarded spacecraft hardware strewn across the surface. And the best views — of Mars and the journey there — are yet to come.

“Spectacular,” mission deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said of the footage. “We’ve not had that before.”

The nuclear-powered, six-wheel Curiosity will spend the next two years chiselling into rocks and scooping up soil at Gale Crater to determine whether the environment ever had the right conditions for microbes to thrive. It will spend a chunk of its time driving to Mount Sharp where images from space reveal signs of past water on the lower flanks.

The mission follows similar Mars missions by Spirit, which was active between 2004 and 2010, and Opportunity, which became active in 2004 and remains operational.

Since parking itself inside an ancient crater Sunday night, Curiosity has delighted scientists with views of its new surroundings, including the 3-mile-high mountain it will drive to. It beamed back the first colour picture on Tuesday revealing a tan-hued, pebbly landscape and the crater rim off in the distance.

Locale aside, Curiosity is giving scientists an unprecedented sense of what it took to reach its Martian destination. The roving laboratory sent back nearly 300 thumbnails that Nasa processed into a low-quality video showing the last 2 1/2 minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the thin Martian atmosphere.

Nasa twice tried to record a Mars landing. In 1999, the Mars Polar Lander carried similar gear, but it slammed into the south pole after prematurely shutting off its engines. Another effort was aborted in 2008 during the Phoenix lander’s mission to the northern plains when mission managers decided not to turn it on for fear it would interfere with the landing.

“It’s too emotional for me,” said Ken Edgett of the Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the video camera. “It’s been a long journey and it’s really awesome.”

Curiosity’s journey to Mars spanned eight months and 566 million kilometres. Earlier this week, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught Curiosity sailing through the Martian skies under a parachute. It was only the second time a spacecraft has been photographed on a parachute” the first was Phoenix during its descent to the surface.

It’ll be several weeks before it takes its first drive and flexes its robotic arm. Since landing, engineers have been busy performing health checkups on its systems and instruments. Over the next several days, it was poised to send back crisper pictures of its surroundings including a panorama. The rover was “still in great shape,” mission manager Michael Watkins said.