Orono - At 1:32 Monday morning NASA's mars science rover, Curiosity, landed in a crater on Mars.

The goal of the 2.5 billion dollar mission is to find more evidence of life, previously or currently, on the red planet.

Water has already been located, now scientists are searching for the existence of carbon.

It's the first astrobiology mission to Mars since the 1970's and the Viking probes were sent there.

According to UMaine professor Neil Comins, Curiosity could eventually be a landmark moment in space exploration. "There is a laser on curiosity that will actually fire into the surface and vaporize pieces of it and we'll be able to study the chemistry of the surface that way, we'll be able to scoop things out of mars with a scoop that's on curiosity and when all is said and done if it tells us what we hope it will tell us I'd rank it say among the top five things that we've ever done in space."

Curiosity is expected to remain active for at least one Mars year which is equivalent to two of our years.

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