Curiosity rover makes its first moves at 'Bradbury Landing' on Mars NASA's Curiosity rover made its first drive on Mars today, more than two weeks after its high-stakes landing on the Red Planet. To celebrate the day, as well as what would have been the late science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury's 92nd birthday, NASA said the rover's landing site would be forever known as Bradbury Landing. Today's drive amounted to only about 23 feet (7 meters) of maneuvers, but it represented the first step in a $2.5 billion, two-year trek that's expected to go at least 12 miles (20 kilometers) and take in a commanding view from the flanks of a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain within 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater. The mission's project manager, Peter Theisinger, said the drive "couldn't be more important." The drive also marked a transition for the Curiosity team  -- from the entry, descent and landing phase of the mission, known as EDL, to surface operations and rover mobility. " Wheel tracks on Mars. The EDL team is finally done. :) Congrats to the mobility and surface teams!" Allen Chen, the mission's EDL operations and flight dynamics lead, declared in a Twitter update . Lead rover driver Matt Heverly said that today's drive started at 7:17 a.m. PT (10:17 a.m. ET) and lasted roughly 16 minutes. "The majority of that time was spent taking images," he said. The rover rolled out 15 feet (4.5 meters), made a 120-degree turn in place, and then backed up 8 feet (2.5