The red tundra of the Martian north pole has been revealed for the first time, in remarkable images captured by a Nasa spacecraft yesterday after its 423-million-mile journey ended with a perfect landing.

Mission controllers in Pasadena, California, erupted into rapturous applause, some weeping with pride and relief as the Phoenix probe beamed its first signal back to Earth at 12.53am London time, marking a safe end to a final descent described as “seven minutes of terror”.

“Those seven minutes of terror are going to be followed by three months of joy,” Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said after the landing.

Further celebrations followed as Phoenix returned its first photographs, showing that the solar panels that will power the 90-day mission had unfurled safely. “Phoenix has spread her wings,” one engineer said. “Is that a pretty sight or what?”

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• Pictures: Phoenix Mars landing

More images then displayed the bleak landscape of Mars’s Vastitas Borealis, a permafrost wasteland at a latitude akin to northern Canada on Earth, which has never been visited or photographed before.

The flat plain is pockmarked with a honeycomb pattern of polygon shapes on the surface, which had been seen from orbit. These are thought to have been created by a cycle of freezing and thawing that has left water ice buried slightly beneath the ground. If Nasa’s calculations are correct, this ice will be within reach of Phoenix’s 2.35metre robotic arm, with which it will dig to allow science to study Martian water directly for the first time.

In a remarkable photograph snapped by a separate spacecraft, the Mars Renaissance Orbiter, which flew overhead at the time of landing, Phoenix is shown gliding in for its historic descent underneath its parachute, with Mars spread out below.

Though the probe is not equipped to search for life, its findings should come closer to establishing whether the Red Planet has ever been habitable to organisms, as most specialists in the field suspect. “This confirms what we saw from orbit,” said Dan McCleese, chief scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena.

“Absolutely beautiful. Looks like a good place to start digging.”

The safe descent of the $457 million (£230 million) craft had provoked relief and delight in equal measure, as only five of the numerous previous attempts to land on Mars have succeeded. Among the failures was Britain’s ill-fatedBeagle 2mission in 2003. Engineers had given Phoenix only a 50-50 chance of surviving its final descent, during which it took just 6 minutes, 30 seconds to slow down from 12,750mph to its safe touchdown speed of 5.4mph. Its heat shield had to protect it against temperatures of up to 1,420C (2,600F) as it entered the Martian atmosphere. Retro-rockets fired to cushion its descent – the first time this system has been used since the Viking landings of 1976. More recent craft, such as the SpiritandOpportunityrovers, bounced to the surface in airbags.

“Phoenix has landed. Phoenix has landed. Welcome to the surface of Mars,” said Fuk Li, Nasa’s Mars exploration programme manager, as workers exchanged handshakes.

One minute after landing, Phoenix shut down its communications to save battery power while it unfolded its solar panels, leaving Mission Control waiting anxiously for another 15 minutes and 20 seconds to receive the signal announcing that all was well, due to it having to be relayed 171 million miles across the solar system. Then came the signal confirming that everything was in place, followed within two hours by images of the surface.

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