NASA's Insight lands on Mars after six months of travel

Now, the InSight camera has returned sharper images of the red planet, showing a Mars much lighter than you would have imagined.

The photo also shows a dusty and rocky surface with no big craters in sight.

The new robot resident sent signals to the ground around 12:30, indicating that his solar panels were open and that he was capturing the sunlight on the Martian surface.

The image was transmitted from InSight to Earth via NASA's Odyssey Probe, currently in orbit around Mars.

"The InSight team can rest a little easier tonight, knowing that the spacecraft's solar panels are deployed and charging the batteries," said Tomm Hoffman, InSight's project manager, at the lab. NASA's Jet Propulsion in Pasadena, California, which runs the mission.

"The day was long for the team. But tomorrow begins an exciting new chapter for InSight: surface operations and the beginning of the instrument deployment phase. "

Two hours after InSight landed on Mars, scientists and technicians from the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex took control of NASA's global network of communications systems.

It's their job of sending and receiving signals from the InSight probe at 54 million kilometers.

"For most of the day, we will be responsible for the first communications with InSight, as its science mission begins on the surface of Mars," said CSIRO spokesperson Glen Nagle.

The CIDRO-managed Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Tidbinbilla is part of NASA's Deep Space Network and provides two-way radio contact to dozens of robotic space vehicles exploring the solar system and beyond, including the InSight mission on Mars.

The CDSCC sister station located outside Madrid, Spain, was the facility that connected NASA's flight controllers to InSight during the landing phase and to connecting with the MarCo twin satellite cubes flying over Mars, which provided a relay of these signals to the Earth.

What will InSight do?

The control of the Spanish antennas was ensured by the Deep Space Network station in California. At 9 am, AEDT, the CSIRO-managed facility in Canberra, took control of the entire network around the world.

"The orders sent to InSight by the mission science team go through the Deep Space network, as well as all the data coming out of Mars from this fascinating mission," Nagle said.

"We have been following InSight since it was launched last May, and we will do so throughout its two-year core mission to the Red Planet.

"InSight is a seismological mission on Mars, offering the first view on the inside of the planet. InSight will allow scientists to better understand the formation and early evolution of planetary formation, including the Earth. "

The secure landing of InSight makes it one of nine missions currently in operation on Mars.

"Mars continues to be the bottling of the solar system," Nagle said. "And Mars is about to get even busier in the future, with more rovers and landers in the planning. One day, it will be a human foot that will set foot on the surface of Mars, and this person is still alive on Earth.

"In the meantime, robotic ambbadadors like InSight are paving the way for this next giant step for humanity."

TOUCHDOWN CONFIRMED

The flight controllers announced that the InSight satellite had reached the surface just before 7:00 am EDT, after a dangerous supersonic descent through the red Martian sky.

After landing, InSight tweeted the following strange words from the alien world: "I feel on Mars … and soon, I'll know your heart. With this landing safely, I am here. I'm at home."

InSight also shared the first photo of Mars on Twitter, stating, "The lens cover is not off yet, but I only had to show you a first glimpse of my new home."

The flight controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, jumped out of their seats and burst out in howls, applause and laughter when the news arrived.

"Touchdown confirmed!", Announces a flight controller.

The vehicle seemed in good condition, according to the first communications received.

It is the first spacecraft built to explore the deep interior of another world, carrying instruments to detect planetary heat and seismic rumblings never measured elsewhere than on Earth.

After waiting for the suspensions to confirm that the men were coming from space, people kissed each other, shook hands, exchanged 50-year-olds, raised their fists, wiped their tears and danced in the aisles.

Mission control erupts while landing is confirmed

"Flawless," said JPL Chief Engineer Rob Manning. "That's what we really hoped and imagined in our minds," he said. "Sometimes things work in your favor."

Vice President Mike Pence has called to congratulate the US Space Agency for his hard work.

Because of the distance between Earth and Mars, the confirmation took eight minutes, relayed by a pair of tiny satellites that followed InSight throughout the journey of 482 million kilometers traveled in six months.

The two satellites not only delivered the good news almost in real time, but they also returned the first InSight camera snapshot to Mars, just four minutes after landing. The picture was covered with dust, because the dust cover was still visible on the LG camera, but at first glance the terrain was smooth and sandy, leaving only an imposing rock – pretty much what that scientists hoped.

Better images will arrive in the hours and days ahead.

"What a relief," Manning told AP. "It's really fantastic." He added, "Wow! It never gets old.

It was NASA's eighth successful landing on Earth since the 1976 Viking Probe, and the first in six years. The NASA Curiosity robot, arrived in 2012, is still moving on Mars.

The three-foot InSight probe, catapulted through a billion-dollar international initiative, was designed to bury itself beneath the surface of the red planet after the trip.

The spacecraft reached the surface after being slowed down by a parachute, supported by braking motors due to the weak atmosphere of Mars.

19 800KPH TO ZERO IN SIX MINUTES

The plan was that the spacecraft would go from 19,800 km / h to zero in six minutes as it entered the Martian atmosphere and settled on the surface.

"Landing on Mars is one of the most difficult jobs people have to do in planetary exploration," said Bruce Banerdt, Senior Scientist for InSight.

"It's so difficult, it's so dangerous that there is always a very good chance that something is not going well."

Mars has been the cemetery of a multitude of space missions. Until now, the success rate on the Red Planet was only 40%, counting all attempts at overflight, orbital flight and landing by the United States, Russia and other countries since 1960.

The United States has, however, made seven landings on Mars over the last four decades, not counting InSight, with only one touchdown. No other country has managed to install and operate a spacecraft on a dusty red surface.

We never take Mars for granted. Mars is difficult, "Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's badociate director for the scientific mission, told reporters.

InSight fired for Elysium Planitia, a plain near the Martian equator that the InSight team hopes to be as flat as a parking lot in Kansas with little or no rocks. The first images seem to confirm that this has been achieved.

WHAT INSIGHT WILL DO

No lander has dug deeper on Mars than several inches and no seismometer has ever worked on the planet.

The stationary 360-kilogram landing gear will use its 1.8-meter robotic arm to place a mechanical mole and a seismometer on the ground. The self-hammering mole digs five meters down to measure the internal heat of the planet, while the seismometer listens to possible earthquakes.

Germany is responsible for InSight's mole, while France is responsible for the seismometer.

By examining the inside of Mars, scientists hope to understand how the rocky planets of our solar system were formed 4.5 billion years ago and why they turned out so different: cold and dry Mars, Venus and Mercury burning and Earth conducive to life.

InSight however has no life detection capability. These will be left to the attention of future rovers, such as NASA's Mars 2020 mission, which will collect rocks that will eventually be brought back to Earth and badyzed for traces of ancient life.

Earlier, Tim Hoffin, project manager, said the successful landing of InSight would not be fully visible for several hours.

"We will certainly have a celebration when we have managed to land but we will have to temper it a little while we wait about five and a half hours to know with certainty that we are in shape," he said.

InSight will spend 24 months, about a Martian year, reviewing Mars.

While Earth's tectonics and other forces have erased most of the early evidence, much of Mars would have remained largely static, creating a geological time machine for scientists.

Originally published in Life on Mars: epic photo of NASA's probe