Spirit probe rolls onto martian surface

Twelve days after its bouncy arrival on the Red Planet, the robotic rover Spirit has rolled off its landing platform for its first spin on martian soil, steered by Earth-bound NASA engineers sitting 115 million miles away.

The 78-second outing took Spirit only about 10 feet (3 meters) straight ahead but was hailed by project managers at the Pasadena-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a flawless prelude to the six-wheeled craft's historic quest for signs of life-sustaining water.