In 1980, the U.S. spacecraft Voyager I sent back the first close-up pictures of the planet Saturn.

CNN: Wednesday,

Team members hugged and high-fived one another as Curiosity beamed back the first pictures from the planet, while some shed tears.

CNN: Mars landing went 'flawlessly,' scientists say

Women wave from street stalls adorned with pictures stolen from the pages of Lonely Planet, the popular backpacker guide.

CNN: Stops and Starts

Orbiting 440 miles above Earth, the satellite will zip around the planet 14 times a day, snapping hundreds of pictures that will be beamed back to ground stations in South Dakota, Alaska and Norway.

NPR: Latest Earth Satellite Launches From Calif. Coast

And in case you missed the latest robotic resident arriving on Mars you can watch the action replay and view the very first pictures beamed back from the surface of the Red Planet on Nasa's Mars Science Laboratory mission homepage.

BBC: Webscape: Mission to Mars

The pictures illustrate neatly the particular specialism of using radar to sense the planet's surface.

BBC: German TanDEM-X satellite returns first images

Pictures of its disc taken using visible light show a warp, suggestive of a large planet.

ECONOMIST: Dusty genesis