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During this long Thanksgiving weekend, favorite football teams are sure to watch touchdowns across the country, but NASA is eagerly awaiting a touchdown of a different kind on Monday. NASA has announced that its exploration of the interior of Mars using seismic surveys or the InSight lander is scheduled for a smooth touchdown on the surface of the red planet on Nov. 26.
During the holiday weekend, NASA engineers will not feast on the turkey alone; they will also monitor the probe's data flow to make sure the undercarriage is in good health and stay on track to land. The team will also monitor the weather on Mars to ensure that nature will not affect the landing of InSight.
It's a very long trip for InSight, which took off May 5th from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The team said that until now, the flight to Mars had proceeded without incident and no problem was found. The hardest part of the whole mission is waiting for us, because landing on Mars is not an easy task.
When InSight enters the atmosphere of Mars for the first time, the craft will move to 12,300 mph. Before the spacecraft hits the surface seven minutes later, it must decelerate to 5 mph. The entire landing process is preprogrammed without any assistance available from NASA personnel on Earth.
Engineers will know in near real-time if InSight is doing well, Mars Cube's CubeSat (MarCO) mission is in orbit around Mars and will transmit the data to Earth from InSight. JPL and Lockheed Martin space crews will be able to determine InSight's behavior during the landing eight minutes after the end of landing activities. Once this landing is complete, the real InSight mission will begin.
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