People kept asking me if I was nervous or anxious. It finally hit me at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, 2 hours prior to landing. By the time I got to the Science Operations Center for the BBQ and landing festivities, a few hundred people were already there. I had several family members and friends there myself. It was crazy in there, with reporters mission personnel, and friends and family. Finally, the first signals started coming in shortly after 4:30.

Atmosphere entry: Cheers!

Parachute deploy: Cheers!

Radar ground lock: Cheers!!

Free fall and thruster start: Big Cheers!

250meters, 150meters, 100meters, 80meters, 70, 60, 50, 40 meters, 27 meters.

Everyone is on pins and needles. 10 meters.

And then it comes, "Touchdown confirmation!" and the room pauses.

Everyone is waiting, "is it ok to cheer now?". And then the room erupts.

Cheers and tears, smiles and hugs. We are on Mars!! A 422-million mile, 10-month journey through the vacuum of space, years of assembly and testing and we made it. And the navigation team made it look easy. But to put the difficulty into perspective, the journey required an accuracy of 1 part in 10 million, said one NASA official.

And now the work begins.

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