Three antenna dishes at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex close to the national capital received the signals for the entry, descent and landing of the mission.

"It couldn't have gone better. It was literally a textbook landing," said Glen Nagle, spokesman for the complex which is managed on NASA's behalf by the Australian government science body CSIRO.

Nagle said about 400 people crammed into the visitors centre of the complex at Tidbinbilla, about 35 kilometres (22 miles) from Canberra city, to watch the landing, among them retired tracking staff who had worked on previous NASA missions.

"When the signal came through... the place erupted. People were just over the moon... they were literally joyous," he told AFP.

"For a lot of people who were too young to be around at the time of Apollo, this was their moon landing."

The complex is one of three tracking stations in NASA's Deep Space Network but was the only one involved in Monday's landing. The others are in Madrid, Spain and Goldstone, California.

About 80 people were on duty in Canberra as part of the team listening for a series of distinct tones from the spacecraft as various steps in its complicated landing process were activated.

The most important tone confirmed the rover had landed safely on Mars.

Elsewhere in Australia, the CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope was to record the tones which were transmitted as a UHF radio signal in the first minutes of the spacecraft's entry into Mars's atmosphere.

Another smaller antenna managed by the European Space Agency at New Norcia, near the Western Australian capital Perth, would also to receive signals from the spacecraft, officials said.

"Touchdown confirmed," said a member of mission control at the laboratory as the room erupted in cheers at the touchdown of their $2.5-billion Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover on the surface of the Red Planet, breaking new ground in the US-led search for signs of alien life.

"We are wheels down on Mars. Oh, my God!"

Just minutes before that, a small control room packed with mission specialists had plunged into anguished silence as everyone watched images on the screens of the main control room, where all present could follow Curiosity's progress step by step.

"Seven minutes of terror" was how NASA characterized the extremely sophisticated operation that preceded the actual landing.

An initial round of applause came when Curiosity sent its first signal before entering the Martian atmosphere.

A second sigh of relief was when the ship opened its parachute.

But the most difficult part was yet to come: the vessel had to stabilize before an overhead crane, using nylon cables, gently placed Curiosity on the Martian soil -- an operation that had never before been conducted.

At 10:32 pm local time (0532 GMT) this was accomplished and cries of joys filled the JPL: "Hell, we did it!"

The joy was palpable in the newsroom as project managers passed around Mars chocolate bars to employees, the JPL's "shadow army" of people who never appeared on cameras but worked doggedly for eight years to make the historic moment possible.

Intoxicated by their success, the JPL workers -- all dressed in commemorative blue polo shirts with "August 5" embroidered on the heart -- poured into the press conference room.

When the mission managers rose to the podium, the "blue shirts" rose as well, waving small American flags and chanting "EDL! EDL! EDL!" for the Entry, Descent, Landing team.

Those were a few minutes of joyful chaos, where every employee did a high-five with their supervisors, including Adam Steltzner, head of the EDL, who would dissolve in tears a few minutes later.

Beth Fabinsky, an engineer at JPL, said that when the magic word "contact' was uttered, she had an extraordinary feeling.

"It was amazing, better than we could have ever expected," Fabinsky told AFP. "I've been on a few missions where we've had success and that feeling beats anything I can imagine in my life yet.

"Everybody was terrified because this is the most complex mission that JPL has ever endeavored," she recalled. "There are so many things that could have gone wrong and they didn't and that was amazing. The fact that this one succeeded, it's got a little bit of miracle in it. So we're all thankful."

Gurkirpal Singh, who designed the guidance system for the last minute of descent, said he hardly had time to react.

"It was picture perfect," he said. "It was better than we could have ever hoped for.

"When I hear about the touchdown, it was a tremendous relief," Singh recalled. "You worry about a lot of things. It's a wonderful feeling.

"For the touchdown, you just rely on data. But the picture is undeniable. You cannot argue with a picture."