The rover, after traveling for more than eight months, safely landed on the surface of Mars before 2 a.m.
Mars was bombarded with approximately 2.6 million of these pulses.
But Prof Colin Pillinger, the scientist behind the ill-fated Beagle-2 mission to Mars, said the printer would have to be really precise to be able to fabricate complex parts that usually make up the body of a spacecraft.
Last summer, when I first met Prof Siegert, I was too polite to remind him of what had happened to another British science project, the Beagle 2 mission to Mars, the spacecraft named after the ship that had carried Charles Darwin.
Europe entered the Mars race in 2003 with the Mars Express Orbiter and the Beagle 2 lander.
The 2, 000-pound Mars rover Curiosity made its landing on Mars on August 6, 2012, and has been sending back fascinating images and data ever since.
See more images sent by the rover:The 2, 000-pound Mars rover Curiosity made its landing on Mars on August 6, 2012, and has been sending back fascinating images and data ever since.
Mars Express went into an initial orbit around Mars at about the time that Beagle 2 was landing, and it is now being manoeuvred into an operational orbit that will take it over both poles.
ECONOMIST: The current crop of Mars missions has got off to a bad start
Scientists have determined that the meteorite is from Mars, where the rock itself was formed about 2.1 billion years ago.
There have been three successful Mars lander missions, the Viking 1 and Viking 2 in 1976, and the Pathfinder in 1997.
CNN: Mars Pathfinder enlisted in search for lost Polar Lander
Tethered to the seafloor 130 miles southeast of New Orleans in 2, 900 feet of water, Mars was built to withstand 71-foot waves and 140mph winds.
So far the excellent performance of Mars Express has been somewhat overshadowed by the loss of its lander Beagle 2, which should have touched down on the planet on Christmas Day.
We're kind of on the fence here, since we ourselves have been known to lie about our TV viewing habits during an embarrassing Veronica Mars kick last year, but the fact that Arbitron's research comes from 2, 000 households in Houston during the Sprint of 2005 doesn't really incite confidence.
But the main means of communication with Beagle 2 was always intended to be its mother ship, the European Space Agency's Mars Express, from which it was released on December 19th.
ECONOMIST: The current crop of Mars missions has got off to a bad start
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