PASADENA, Jan 25: NASA's Opportunity rover zipped its first pictures of Mars to Earth early Sunday, delighting and puzzling scientists just hours after the spacecraft bounced to a landing on the opposite side of the red planet from its twin rover, Spirit.

The pictures showed a surface smooth and dark red in some places, and strewn with fragmented slabs of light bedrock in others. Bounce marks apparently left by the rover's air bags when it landed were clearly visible.

"I am flabbergasted. I am astonished. I am blown away. Opportunity has touched down in an alien and bizarre landscape," Steven Squyres, the mission's main scientist, said early Sunday. "I still don't know what we're looking at."

"The pictures just blow me away. We've certainly not been to this place before," deputy project manager Richard Cook said. The six-wheeled rover landed at 0505 GMT in Meridiani Planum, believed to be the smoothest, flattest region on Mars. It lies 6,600 miles (10,600 km) and halfway around the planet from where Opportunity's twin, Spirit, landed on Jan. 3.

Initial analysis of the images suggested Opportunity landed in a shallow crater. Its low rim shouldn't block the rolling robot once it gets going, Squyres said.-APP