8 minutes of tension, then good news, for the planetary scientist of UBC involved in landing on Mars

On Monday afternoon, for eight minutes, a crowd in a University of British Columbia museum gallery watched with deep silence the live stream of a NASA spacecraft descend towards March.

The issues were particularly important for one of the viewers: Catherine Johnson, Planetary Scientist at the University of British Columbia, the only Canadian to participate in the mission.

"Eight minutes of nail, then good news," she said Monday at Radio-Canada. On the coast, just hours after the three – leg landing of the InSight lander on the red planet.

The probe, designed to bury itself beneath the surface of Mars, landed Monday after a 482 million kilometer journey in six months and a six-minute perilous descent through the rose-tinted atmosphere.

The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory flight controllers in Pasadena, California, jumped out of their seats and exploded in yells, applause and laughter at the news that the three-foot InSight lander had touched the planet. red.

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

Go to the NASA laboratory

In Vancouver, the landing ended five years of preparation for Johnson and his team. But their work is just beginning.

The Johnson team studies marsquakes, including where they occur, to determine active fouls. It also examines the water content of rocks to shed light on the history of water on the planet.

Johnson will visit NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California on Wednesday.

Catherine Johnson and her team spent five years preparing for the Mars mission. (Catherine Johnson / UBC)

The plan is to light a magnetometer on Thursday to measure the planet's magnetic field, Johnson said. It will use this data to better understand the properties of the planet's atmosphere.

"I'm excited about having a good view of the interior," she said. "To know where and when earthquakes occur, what is their size, number and where they are."

She added: "This is a very big mission for the global scientific community".

Listen to the full interview with Johnson below:

& # 39; What a relief & # 39;

In North America, live screenings have taken place in museums, planetariums and libraries, as well as Times Square in New York.

Two InSight trolling mini-satellites since their takeoff may have provided virtually real-time updates of the supersonic descent of the spacecraft through the reddish sky. The satellite also sent back a quick photo from the surface of Mars.

The image was damaged by debris stains on the camera cover. But this quick glance at the sight revealed a sandy, flat surface with little or no rocks – exactly what the scientists hoped for. Better images will arrive in the hours and days ahead.

The first photo returned to Earth after landing the InSight lander on the planet Mars on Monday: a view of a flat and smooth stretch on the red planet called Elysium Planitia. (EPA-EFE / NASA)

"What a relief," said Manning. "It's really fantastic." He added, "It never gets old."

The InSight probe reached the surface after going 19,800 km / h to zero in six minutes flat, using a parachute and braking motors to slow down. Radio signals confirming the landing took more than eight minutes to cross the nearly 160 million kilometers between Mars and Earth.

It was NASA's ninth attempt to land on Mars since the 1976 Viking probes. All previous US touchdowns, except one, have been successful.

The last time NASA landed on Mars in 2012 with the Curiosity rover.

An artist concept shows the InSight lander, its sensors, its cameras and its instruments. After a six-month trip, the probe landed successfully on Monday on Mars. (NASA / JPL-Caltech)

"Landing on Mars is one of the most difficult jobs that people have to do in global exploration," said Bruce Banerdt, scientific leader of InSight. "It's such a difficult thing – it's such a dangerous thing that there's always a pretty uncomfortably big chance that something is going wrong."

40% success rate for Martian missions

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

An artist impression shows InSight penetrating the Martian atmosphere, about 128 kilometers above the surface and just minutes from the landing. (NASA / JPL)

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.

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.

This is not a rock collecting expedition. Instead, the stationary 360-kilogram undercarriage will use its 1.8-meter robotic arm to place a mechanical mole and 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.

But putting these instruments in place will take several months, as NASA scientists will first need to badess the health of the spacecraft and the area where it landed.

No ability to detect life

Nothing like it has been tried before on Mars, a planet located nearly 160 million kilometers from the Earth.

People react by watching InSight land on Mars from Times Square in New York. (Brendan McDermid / Reuters)

No lander has dug more than several inches and no seismometer has ever worked on Mars.

By examining the interior of Mars, scientists hope to understand how the rock planets of our solar system were formed 4.5 billion years ago and why they proved so different: Mars, cold and dry, Venus and Mercury, burning and Earth, hospitable.

"We are trying to go back in time to the early stages of our planet," said Banerdt. "The fingerprints of these early processes are just not here on Earth."

InSight however has no life detection capability. This will be left to future rovers. NASA's Mars 2020 mission, for example, will collect rocks that will eventually be brought back to Earth and badyzed for evidence of ancient life.