Image taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's panoramic camera shows where the rover's airbag seams

PASADENA , California , January 25 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Scientists marveled Sunday, January 25, as Opportunity , the second of two roving U.S. Mars probes, transmitted its first images from the planet's surface, putting an 820-million-dollar research program back on track.

The black-and-white and color photos showed the probe resting on a plain near a rock outcropping in an area of Mars known as the Meridiani Planum, where Opportunity touched down at 9:05 pm Saturday (0505 GMT), reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The Meridium Planum is a zone of gray hematite, an iron oxide. Scientists plan to use the robot's instruments to determine whether the gray hematite layer comes from sediments of a former ocean, from volcanic deposits altered by hot water or from other ancient environmental conditions.

"I am astonished. I am blown away. Opportunity has touched down in a bizarre, alien landscape," said Steve Squyers, the mission's scientific director.

"It was exactly what it was in my wildest dreams."

Opportunity 's successful touchdown brightened the mood of those working on the Mars mission, who have been struggling to restore Spirit, the first of the two rovers sent to Mars, to full operation.

"It does look like we landed about 24 kilometers downrange from the center of the target. We are still a little bit uncertain on that," said Richard Cook, deputy manager for the Mars Exploration Rover project.

"I think we're going to have a good place for science."

Former vice President Al Gore and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined NASA staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California in cheers at the successful landing.

"What a night!" National Aeronautics and Space Administration chief Sean O'Keefe exclaimed.

Theories that Mars was once awash with water got dramatic confirmation from data relayed to Earth recently by Europe's unmanned spacecraft, Mars Express.

Initial results from Mars Express sketched an image of a planet whose surface was once sculpted by seas and glaciers and confirmed indications that its South Pole is capped by frozen water, the European Space Agency said.

The 820-million-dollar Spirit and Opportunity project is the most ambitious ever sent to Mars.

The two golf-cart-sized solar-powered rovers were to study the dusty Martian surface's geological characteristics for three months to determine whether the red planet ever had conditions conducive to life.

Spirit's breakdown came just as the rover was to begin searching for signs of past life-sustaining water.

The probe, which functioned flawlessly after its January 3 landing in Gusev Crater on the other side of the planet, has been plagued with communications problems since Wednesday.

NASA said a signal was received Friday from the solar-powered rover by one of the giant antennas of the international Deep Space Network near Madrid. Engineers planned to ask Spirit to provide further information about its condition in an effort to work out why the rover fell silent.

Officials worried the problems could take weeks to sort out, and may never be entirely resolved.

"The chances it will be perfect again are not good," Mars Exploration Rover project manager Pete Theisinger said. "We have got a long way to go with the patient in intensive care.

"We made good progress overnight and Rover has been upgraded from critical to serious. We don't know what's broken and the consequences.

"The flight software is not working properly. We should expect that we will not be restoring functionality to Spirit for a significant amount of time - many days, perhaps a couple of weeks - even under the very best of circumstances."