WASHINGTON, July 5: Mankind's first close-up of Mars-scape could have been a Salvador Dali painting. Jagged rocks and boulders lay strewn across a flat plain. A distant peak loomed on the horizon. The Martian atmosphere and sky was cloaked in a reddish hue. Every thing seemed still and surreal.

Some six hours after the spacecraft Pathfinder made an almost-perfect landing on our nearest neighbour, it transmitted some of the most breathtaking high-resolution pictures ever seen of the red planet. NASA released 120 of them. They were flashed on the Internet and television to herald the first exploration of our sibling planet since the Viking landers dropped in 21 years ago.

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, on tenderhooks since morning, exulted ``We're there!'' when the first signal arrived at 1.07 EST that Pathfinder had landed safely in an area called Ares Vallis. A short time later they began to ``Twist and Shout'' - literally, for they began playing the Beatles song of the same title. It was hard not to be elated by their infectious enthusiasm as they hugged each other with schoolboyish joy.

In a quieter moment, they explained that Pathfinder hit the Martian surface at some 25 miles and bounced three times, the first time as high as a three-storey building, before plonking down. The Martian atmosphere was thinner than they thought it would be.

The gravity was fifteen times that on Earth. The spacecraft came down on a rock-strewn field which seemed relatively flat. It showed only a two degree incline at landing.

In fact, after the landing, Pathfinder flashed a semaphore - a diagnostic signal - that showed it had come down almost perfectly, base petal down. That meant the tetrahedron-shaped spacecraft would not have to be put through any exercise to go rightside up. ``This is nirvana for us guys,'' said Brian Muirhead, the flight systems manager.

A couple of hours later, as the sun rose on the frigid Martian landscape - signalling the start of Sol 1 -- a Sol being a Martian day equal to 24 hours and 37 minutes of earth time - the solar panels opened like petals to kick in the onboard computer. Soon Pathfinder began all other automated landing tasks, including 42 cranks of a winch to retract the giant air bags that cushioned its impact. And this is where it ran into the first glitch.

For reasons the scientists were unable to explain, the airbags had not been pulled in completely.

The first pictures showed the cream coloured bags spread out like a deflated parachute caught underneath the spacecraft. NASA said it did not pose a great problem. They have contingency plans to raise the sides of the spacecraft and pull in the flappy bags. This will enable them to put down the ramp so send out the Pathfinder rover.