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NASA's InSight Receiver has fully deployed its seismometer on the surface of Mars, ready to listen to the marsquakes.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
NASA's InSight mission is going stronger and stronger by announcing that the Mars lander has successfully positioned his seismometer, ready to listen to marsquake.
NASA announced the new Wednesday night tweeting a GIF indicating that the instrument was placed on the red dust of Mars. According to the space agency, it is the first time that a scientific instrument is placed on the surface of another planet.
The InSight Lander landed on Mars at the end of November, it is ready for a seven-year mission that will allow the spacecraft to sink deeper into the planet than ever before. It will measure how the planet is wobbling on its axis in orbit around the sun and will ultimately study the composition of the core of Mars.
Parallel to all this science, InSight will also study the seismic activity on Mars – just as Earth undergoes earthquakes, NASA is looking for a ground motion, or "marsquakes", under the Martian surface.
But to do all that, NASA had to position the seismometer of InSight just right, which is not easy when you use a remote spacecraft on another planet with an eight-minute communication delay.
"The deployment of a seismometer is as important as landing on Mars with InSight," said InSight principal investigator Bruce Banerdt. "Seismometer is InSight's highest priority instrument: we need it to reach about three quarters of our scientific goals."
Since this is not NASA's first rodeo, a team of scientists has been training to deploy instruments with an exact replica of the lander (known as ForeSight) on a false Mars on Earth. (Fun fact: the fake Martian dust is made from crushed garnet stones).
And the practice has borne fruit.
"The schedule for InSight's Mars activities was better than expected," said Tom Hoffman, InSight Project Manager. "Getting the seismometer safely on the ground is a great Christmas present."
Look at this:
The InSight landing of NASA and the incredible chances of …
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NASA is 60 years old: the space agency has pushed humanity further than anyone and plans to go further.
Take it to the extreme: mix crazy situations – eruptive volcanic eruptions, nuclear collapses, 30-foot waves – with everyday technologies. This is what happens.
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