NASA InSight lander landed safely on Mars

A major feat in interplanetary space travel took place on Monday. NASA's InSight satellite landed on Mars to begin its two-year study on the core of our neighboring planet. This is NASA's first landing on Mars since the 2012 Curiosity rover.

After a journey of 300 million miles, the lander landed around 14:54 ET and took this picture of his landing site. (There is a dust cover on the lens covered with debris, but you can still see the ground and the horizon on Mars, and finally the dust cover will be removed and we will have clearer images of # 39; InSight).

NASA / JPL

You can watch NASA's live mission control feed in the video below.

And here's why the landing was so painful: the spacecraft being so far away, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory mission in California could not fly InSight. Radio transitions to the LG are delayed by several minutes. And like the Curiosity rover, InSight had to land in just 6.5 minutes.

It only remains to wait a few hours to have confirmation of the opening of InSight solar panels.

It's not easy to land a robot spaceship on Mars

Landing on Mars is a technical feat, not just because it is millions of miles away.

The challenge: The red planet has almost the same gravitational appeal as the Earth, but unlike the Earth, it does not have a thick atmosphere to help slow spacecraft. InSight touched the Martian atmosphere, traveling at 12,300 mph, and in 6.5 minutes it had to slow down to 5 mph to land.

The landing took place in a few steps carefully planned by NASA scientists. First, InSight broke away from the mission's "cruising stage". This is the part of the craft that transported it from Earth to Mars, and Insight had to leave it in space.

Insight then had to turn its heat shield towards the atmosphere, which began about 70 miles to the surface of the planet.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

This heat shield protected it while it was going from 12,300 mph to 1,000 mph in just two minutes. Then, 10 miles above the surface, he dropped the heat shield and deployed a parachute. But the parachute was not enough to slow the speed of the machine to land.

It was the most painful part: InSight had to land itself and be ready to face less than ideal conditions, like a dust storm.

At about a kilometer above Mars, InSight drops the parachute and lights thrusters. He had to maneuver quickly to avoid touching the dropped parachute.

Driven by the radar, InSight used its thrusters to slow down its soft landing. On landing, thrusters must be extinguished immediately. (If Insight flipped over the surface, there would be no way to take it back.)

NASA / JPL-Caltech

InSight landed on an area of ​​Mars called Elysium Planitia, vast and flat, located on the equator. The site was chosen, in part, because InSight will run on solar energy and had to be near the equator to have enough sunlight to stay energized for two years.

So, what is InSight going to do?

Now that InSight has landed, it stays in place. It's not a mobile like Curiosity. And he does not need to move because he is not there to study the surface of Mars. InSight is synonymous with indoor exploration using seismic surveys, geodesy and heat transport, and it allows to study the core of Mars. It's basically a geological robot. Using extremely sensitive instruments, he will be able to literally sense the seismic activity and temperature of the planet and record, for the first time, "Marsquakes".

"Each marsquake would look like a light bulb illuminating the structure of the planet's interior," says NASA. "By studying the mode of transmission of seismic waves through the different layers of the planet (the crust, the mantle and the nucleus), scientists can deduce the depth of these layers and their composition. In this way, seismology is like taking an X-ray of the interior of Mars. "

Insight will also take the temperature of Mars; The heat flow and physical properties sensor drives 16 feet into the surface. The instrument will be able to determine how heat flows from Mars's nucleus to its surface and help scientists understand if the Earth and Mars nuclei are formed in the same way.

NASA / JPL

All this is important to study because scientists want to better understand how rocky planets like Mars, Earth and Venus are formed. Below the surface of the Earth is a melt-on mantle on which our continental masses (tectonic plates) float. Plate tectonics is responsible for much of the geological activity on Earth, generating the energy needed for earthquakes and volcanoes. But Mars has no tectonics as active as ours.

Scientists are curious to know why a rocky planet such as Earth is so geologically dynamic and why a rocky planet such as Mars is so relatively motionless. Maybe this information will help to better understand why there is life on Earth but not Mars.