Nasa’s Mars rover Curiosity has taken a 16-minute drive, its first since reaching the Red Planet.

The journey was part of the search for habitats that could have supported microbial life.

The €2 billion, two-year mission, Nasa’s first astrobiology initiative since the 1970s-era Viking probes, kicked off on August 6 with a risky but successful landing at a site Nasa named Bradbury Landing, after the late science fiction author Ray Bradbury.

Apart from a quick steering test earlier in the week, the one-ton rover has stood firmly on its six wheels since touching down inside an ancient impact basin called Gale Crater, located in the planet’s southern hemisphere near the equator.

At 10.17 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, Curiosity became a rover, trudging out a total of 4.5 metres, turning 120 degrees and then backing up 2.5 metres to position itself beside its first science target – a scour mark left behind by the rover’s descent engine.

Most of Curiosity’s drive time was spent taking pictures, including the first images of the rover’s tread marks in the Martian soil.

“It couldn’t be more important. We built a rover, so unless the rover roves, we really have not accomplished anything,” project manager Pete Theisinger, of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters.

Engineers saw no problems during Curiosity’s test drive, clearing the way for a first round of analysis of rock blasted clean by the rover’s landing system engine.

Curiosity is due to make a longer drive in about a week to a place where three different types of terrain come together.

“The soil is firm, great for mobility,” said lead rover planner Matt Heverly.

“We should have smooth sailing ahead of us.”