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A few kilometers from the hugs of tears and applause in California, a team of Australians was holding their breath.
Glen Nagle teased goose bumps as a controller of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory counted the descent of NASA's InSight spacecraft on Martian soil – from 50 meters to 20 – 10 … then, finally, the touch.
"You hold your breath during the entire descent and landing that are out of your control, half a billion kilometers away," he told 10 each day.
Nagle is working at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, one of three stations in the world that provides the essential communication link to dozens of solar system spacecraft – including NASA's InSight who landed Tuesday around 7 am on AEST.
It was a monumental – and particularly early – morning for Australian astronomer Fred Watson.
He went to the same room in Pasadena where the engineers received signals confirming the arrival of InSight.
The feeling is palpable, and Watson – like many around the world – did not want to miss anything.
"I'm still recovering," he said every 10 days.
InSight landed on the red planet after a 548 million kilometer journey over six months in deep space.
"We reached the Martian atmosphere at 19,800 kilometers by the hour, and the complete surface-laying sequence took only six and a half minutes," said Tom Hoffman, project manager. InSight at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The LG was built from an old spaceship, called Phoenix, born from a previous mission that had attempted to land on Mars.
READ MORE: Touch! NASA Insight landed on Mars
"It was sort of a pre-proven technology, but you're never sure, Mars can be cruel, but on that occasion it was nice," Nagle said.
In a few minutes, there was a photo of the surface showing a "nice flat terrain", with the camera's lens cap still covered in dust.
An hour later, it was one of two "Cubesats" the size of a briefcase that flew with InSight to relay the signals back to the Earth.
"They worked perfectly," Nagle said. He hopes that someday he will form an "interplanetary Internet" to relay aircraft signals through the solar system.
And it's only the beginning of a two-year mission that will study the depths of the interior of Mars, detecting what's called marsquakes and meteor impacts for unlock the secrets of the planet beneath the surface.
At present, Nagle and its team of operators in Canberra control the Deep Space Network by relaying orders to and from InSight.
"At the moment, they are carrying out checks on the spacecraft, deploying solar panels and making sure the instruments are working properly, "he said.
Canberra will retain control until Tuesday, around 18 hours, each Australian, Spanish and American stations taking turns.
Over the next two days, Nagle expects to receive more images from InSight when releasing the dust cover and using a robotic arm to capture a 360-degree view of the surface.
"There is still a lot of work to be done on Mars, not only with InSight, but also with the other missions currently in office," he said.
The relayed data will then be distributed to scientists around the world, including Dr. Katarina Milijkovic, the only Australian researcher badociated with the mission.
Working with two doctoral students from the Center for Space Science and Technology at Curtin University, she has just badyzed the data collected by the robotic robot to study the crust and interior of Mars, including the detection of seismic activity or "marsquakes".
"We are living an incredible time to work in space exploration," she said.
"With the active participation of space agencies around the world and this new momentum from private industries, the space sector will only grow.
& # 39;It's a very exciting time to be alive & # 39;
Watson, who is the first newly appointed Atlantic astronomer in Australia, agrees.
"With the creation of the Australian Space Agency, we have seen a real positive attitude from universities and industry in taking advantage of this benefit – accompanying this obvious enthusiasm for the space science, "Watson said.
For years, he has watched the world's space programs with extraordinary enthusiasm.
Things have taken an "interesting twist" since the 1960s, when he was working on a spaceship in a laboratory while Neil Armstrong was taking his first steps on the moon.
"All my colleagues were absorbed by the idea that since the Moon, there would be stepping stones to other planets and that we would wander through the solar system at the turn of the century," he said. .
"We are, but we do it robotically."
Since then, Watson has lived his life in "a state of constant arousal".
"There are discoveries that will surely occur – not just looking for life, but in the physics of the universe … things we do not understand now, but in a few years, maybe we we will do it. "
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Main image: NASA via AAP
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