After the intense landing of InSight Mars by NASA, here's what happens next

NASA has managed its eighth landing of a spaceship on the surface of Mars as the world watched Monday. But doing the long journey and landing without any explosion is just the beginning.

The first things the InSight lander did after his hot and painful six-minute descent through the Martian atmosphere included taking dusty photo but still remarkable and then begins to deploy its solar panels.

Five hours after landing, NASA's Mission Control and InSight's contractor, Lockheed Martin, should receive confirmation that the solar panels are in place and functioning. This will be essential to ensure InSight the ability to carry out its mission of exploring the interior of Mars, to listen to "Marsquakes" and to determine the number of meteorites destroying the red planet.

"We are running on solar power, so it is important to have the RAID modules available and operate them," said Tom Hoffman, InSight Project Manager, in a statement following the landing. "With the dies providing the energy we need to start cold science operations, we are well on our way to thoroughly studying what's inside Mars for the very first time. . "

Once InSight is powered up, the mission teams will review a checklist to make sure that the LG, its robotic arm and all of its scientific instruments are in good health. The dust covers stand out from its two cameras, brightening the jerky view of the first InSight photo and allowing for a detailed study of this red background to determine the best place to install the instruments.

Then, the robotic arm will set the seismometer of InSight called SEIS (Seismic Experience for the inner structure), and put a wind and heat shield on it. With the SEIS in place, the probes and the "mole" will dig up to 4.9 meters deep into the planet to measure internal temperature and study the bowels of Mars.

Elizabeth Barrett, who heads InSight's instrument operations, told reporters Monday that the process of installing instruments on the ground would require two to three months, followed by an additional month or two to drill and start recovering scientific data.

In total, the scientific part of the mission could begin in March 2019.

"Landing was exciting, but I'm looking forward to drilling," said Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator of InSight, in a statement.

Once the InSight instruments are set up, they might continue to resend the data for a while.

"We should listen to Marsquakes for at least two years and hope for much longer," said in a statement Professor Tom Pike of Imperial College London, member of the seismometer design team.

According to Banerdt, the more general purpose of InSight is to better understand not only Mars, but also the Earth and other planets. This is possible because weather processes and plate tectonics, which appear to be less active on Mars, have erased the traces of the first years following the formation of the Earth.

"On Mars, all the things that were formed (at the beginning) are still static," Banerdt told reporters at Monday's press conference.

Unlike its mobile cousins, InSight itself will be stuck on the spot, but it remains very active in defining our understanding of Mars and the rest of the universe. Stay tuned.

NASA is 60 years old: the space agency has pushed humanity further than anyone and plans to go further.

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