A NASA spacecraft designed to burrow beneath the surface of Mars landed on the red planet Monday after a six-month, 300 million-mile (482 million-kilometer) journey and a perilous, six-minute descent through the rose-hued atmosphere.
Flight controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, leaped out of their seats and erupted in screams, applause and laughter as the news came in.
A pair of mini satellites trailing InSight since their May liftoff provided practically real-time updates of the spacecraft’s supersonic descent through the reddish skies. The satellite also shot back a quick photo from Mars’ surface.
The image was marred by specks of debris. But the quick look at the surroundings showed a flat surface with few if any rocks — just what scientists were hoping for. Much better pictures will arrive in the hours and days ahead.
Our @NASAInSight spacecraft stuck the #MarsLanding!
Its new home is Elysium Planitia, a still, flat region where it’s set to study seismic waves and heat deep below the surface of the Red Planet for a planned two-year mission. Learn more: https://t.co/fIPATUugFo pic.twitter.com/j0hXTjhV6I
— NASA (@NASA) November 26, 2018
“What a relief,” said JPL’s chief engineer, Rob Manning. “This is really fantastic.” He added: “Wow! This never gets old.”
Manning said the landing appeared to be flawless.
“This is what we really hoped and imagined in our mind’s eye,” he said. “Sometimes things work out in your favor.”
📸 Wish you were here! @NASAInSight sent home its first photo after #MarsLanding:
InSight’s view is a flat, smooth expanse called Elysium Planitia, but its workspace is below the surface, where it will study Mars’ deep interior. pic.twitter.com/3EU70jXQJw
— NASA (@NASA) November 26, 2018
The three-legged InSight spacecraft reached the surface after going from 12,300 mph (19,800 kph) to zero in six minutes flat as it pierced the Martian atmosphere, using a parachute and braking engines to slow down.
Radio signals confirming the landing took more than eight minutes to cross the nearly 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) between Mars and Earth.
It was NASA’s ninth attempt to land at Mars since the 1976 Viking probes. All but one of the previous U.S. touchdowns were successful.
NASA last landed on Mars in 2012 with the Curiosity rover.
Viewings were held coast to coast at museums, planetariums and libraries, as well as New York’s Times Square.
“Landing on Mars is one of the hardest single jobs that people have to do in planetary exploration,” InSight’s lead scientist, Bruce Banerdt, said before the landing. “It’s such a difficult thing, it’s such a dangerous thing that there’s always a fairly uncomfortably large chance that something could go wrong.”
Mars has been the graveyard for a multitude of space missions. Up to now, the success rate at the red planet has been only 40 percent, counting every attempted flyby, orbital flight and landing by the U.S., Russia and other countries since 1960.
The U.S., however, has pulled off seven successful Mars landings in the past four decades, not counting InSight, with only one failed touchdown. No other country has managed to set and operate a spacecraft on the dusty red surface.
InSight was shooting for Elysium Planitia, a plain near the Martian equator that the InSight team hopes is as flat as a parking lot in Kansas with few, if any, rocks.
This is no rock-collecting expedition. Instead, the stationary 800-pound (360-kilogram) lander will use its 6-foot (1.8-meter) robotic arm to place a mechanical mole and seismometer on the ground. The self-hammering mole will burrow 16 feet (5 meters) down to measure the planet’s internal heat, while the seismometer listens for possible quakes.
Nothing like this has been attempted before at our next-door neighbor, nearly 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) away. No lander has dug deeper than several inches, and no seismometer has ever worked on Mars.
By examining the interior of Mars, scientists hope to understand how our solar system’s rocky planets formed 4.5 billion years ago and why they turned out so different — Mars cold and dry, Venus and Mercury burning hot, and Earth hospitable to life.
InSight has no life-detecting capability, however. That will be left to future rovers. NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, for instance, will collect rocks that will eventually be brought back to Earth and analyzed for evidence of ancient life.
(AP)
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10 Responses
How impressive is is that the US government spends billions of dollars for the advancement of science…so that we can measure quakes…on MARS…
I’m sure such exploration will benefit mankind IMMENSELY (…by providing fat paychecks for these scientists so that they can measure quakes on Mars.)
It seems to me that the only semi-rational reason for these space programs are the morale boost it provides.
> philosopher
You are so funny. You do realize this very internet system itself and communications that you are using came from such government research that people at the time complained was such a waste.
“InSight has no life-detecting capability”
That is so disappointing!
I thought they went there to check for more cases of measeles! 🙂
Oops “measles” duh!
No coincidence that these Nasa staff were all intentionally wearing “Red” in honor of “Reddish Mars”.
Georgeg, you would have a point if space exploration would be for communication purposes and for the benefit of humanity only, but exploration of planets for proof that life existed on them and aiming for colonization of planets is ridiculous.
Now if the government would have extra money to spend, then for the sake of the advancement knowledge in science and for the sake of providing cushy jobs for scientists, even if there’s no end purpose to these studies, then I could understand somewhat. But you do realize that the government is deeply in debt and there’s no purpose whatsover in discovering whether, or how many, “possible quakes” there are on Mars. Just because some ongoing space programs benefits us, in no way does that excuse billions of dollars being thrown onto Mars for the benefit of some individuals.
Georgeg, Are you saying that the Arpanet research to communicate intranetwork “on earth” justifies any and all government research programs regardless of how outlandish? Please elaborate.
Frankly I much prefer the exploration of mars to the money that the US wastes on it’s endless wars in the Middle East. This rather poorly written article doesn’t touch the many areas of discovery our scientists are interested in.Core samples of Mars will tell us about minerals lurking below the planets surface, something that interests industry since many of our resources are finite. These core samples will also give us the opportunity to see if there were bacteria or early life forms on the planet. There’s lots more to be learned about this landing and it’s importance, visit the NASA site, to find out more.
Yup. Our tax dollars hard at work.
Georgeg:
Al Gore invented the internet. Not sure what you’re talking about.