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NASA
InSight Penetrated in the Martian atmosphere at 19 800 km per hour. To make a successful landing, he had to reduce his speed in less than seven minutes to just 8 km per hour.
This is the first space probe to explore the heart of Mars. And this Monday, he managed to land on the red planet after a complex descent.
The confirmation that everything had gone well came shortly after 7:50 pm GMT and caused a glittering party in the control room of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where the mission was followed.
InSight, a NASA project involving European partners, will be the first mission to place seismographs on Martian soil . badyze "the bowels" of this planet.
- "Mars had water and it was hot for a time enough on Earth for life to come out"
The mission has instruments allowing it to pierce the surface to a depth never reached and thus measure the seismic movements of the red planet.
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Bill Ingalls / NASA
The NASA Reaction Propulsion Laboratory team in California, from where the mission was followed, celebrated the success of his landing.
The probe departed for Mars on May 5 and Monday 's landing is considered as a spectacular feat .
Landing on Mars is so difficult that about two-thirds of previous attempts ended with failures or .
Shortly after the landing, the probe sent a first photograph of the surface of Mars. It shows a view of Elyseum Planitia that seems somewhat blurred because of the dust raised during the descent.
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NASA
Shortly after landing on the surface of Mars, the Insight probe sent its first image of this planet.
Why is it so hard to land on Mars?
The six-meter-long, 700-kilogram probe landed in a flat area called Elyseum Planitia that NASA describes as "The largest parking on Mars."
To get to the right place, InSight had to enter the Martian atmosphere inside a window of only 24 km by 10 km.
To enter the atmosphere and go back to the surface, you need very complex maneuvers.
The probe must penetrate into the Martian atmosphere at a speed six times higher than a bullet at high speed and must decrease it considerably, he explains Jonathan Amos scientific correspondent.
A recent European attempt in 2016 ended with a probe that crashed to the surface.
On Monday, InSight entered the Martian atmosphere at 19,800 kilometers per hour and had to reduce its speed to 8 km per hour. This extreme deceleration occurred during a period of just under seven minutes .
- The fascinating discovery of the first liquid water lake on Mars
One of the difficulties is that the atmosphere of Mars representing only 1% of the density of the Earth's atmosphere, it there is little friction to slow down the spacecraft.
NASA hoped to succeed with its combination of tools: a heat-resistant capsule, a parachute and a retro-rocket to decrease the speed of the probe.
Before the landing, the US space agency had explained that entering the Martian atmosphere, the capsule would be subjected to a temperature close to 1500 degrees Celsius.
"We made every effort to land successfully." Warned Julie Wertz Chen one of the mission's scientists before it was completed.
"But it's really very very difficult to land on another planet."
"No we dare to say that we'll get there easily, because we never know what surprises Mars can you to give. "
Martian Earthquakes
InSight will perform for the first time a detailed radiograph of the interior of Mars and will remain on the red planet 728 days, about a Martian year or about two years land.
The name of the probe is an acronym for Interior exploration using seismic surveys, geodesy and heat transport (Indoor Exploration with seismic surveys, geodesy and heat transport, in English.)
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NASA / JPL-Caltech
The Probe has seismographs which will allow you to capture Martian Earthquakes.
The seismometers of the ship, a British and a French, will attempt to capture the Martian earthquakes produced by tectonic movements or meteorite impacts.
And the study of seismic vibration will investigate the rocky interior of Mars, from the crust to the mantle and the core.
"An earthquake, it's almost like the flash of a lamp," explained the main scientist of the mission, Bruce Banerdt .
"It illuminates the interior of the planet with seismic waves. And the seismometer is like a camera that collects these waves to compose an image .Pixel by pixel, we rebuild a 3D representation of the interior of the planet ". 19659011] Copyright of the author
NASA / JPL-Caltech
The spacecraft will be the first to place seismographs on the Martian surface.
Another instrument will penetrate the Martian soil to a depth of five meters to measure the amount of heat that escapes from the inside of the planet.
The probe also carries a device developed by Spanish scientists, Twins, which will measure wind speed and temperature, as well as an instrument for measuring changes in the planet's rotation.
Mars and Earth
"Scientists are familiar with the structure of the Earth's interior and have models to explain these structures the beginnings of the solar system there are more than 4,500 million. "years," explained the BBC scientific correspondent, who accompanied the landing from the center that oversees the operation, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA (JPL for its acronym in Spanish). English) in California
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NASA / JPL-Caltech
Two miniature ships called Mars Cube One, or MarCO, I've traveled separately to Mars behind InSight and will transmit to the Earth data concerning the landing.
"But the Earth is only one window on this story and Mars will allow us to better understand how a rocky planet is formed and evolves over the course of thousands of years," added Amos. .
InSight will help astronomers understand why the evolution of Mars and the Earth was so different and what elements were essential for our planet to be habitable.
Two miniature spaceships jointly known as Mars Cube One or MarCO who separated from InSight shortly after its launch, traveled to Mars as part of from a separate experience from NASA.
MarCO is the first mission in the deep space of CubeSats, a clbad of ships using miniature technology.
If MarCO arrives successfully on Mars, it will attempt to transmit InSight data during its use. enters the Martian atmosphere and lands.
If the experiment works, this could be the beginning of a new type of space mission data transmission to Earth, according to the space agency.
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