NASA just days away from a risky landing

The Associated Press CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – Mars is on the cusp of attracting its first American visitor for years: a geologist with one leg, one arm, to dig deep and listen to earthquakes.

NASA's InSight enters the Martian sky on Monday after a 480 million kilometer journey over six months. It will be the first US spacecraft to land since the Curiosity rover in 2012 and the first dedicated to underground exploration.

NASA uses a proven method to bring this mechanical miner to the surface of the red planet. The engine fire will slow down its final descent and the spacecraft will land on its rigid legs, imitating the landings of previous missions.

This is where the old school of this billion-dollar effort led by the United States and Europe ends.

Once the flight controllers in California have determined that the coastline is clear at the landing site – relatively flat and unobstructed – InSight's 1.8 m arm will remove the two main scientific experiments from the LG deck and the will place directly on the Martian surface.

No spaceship has tried such a thing before.

The first do not stop there.

One of the experiments will try to penetrate 5 meters on Mars, using an automatic punching nail equipped with heat sensors to measure the internal temperature of the planet. This would break the record of extraordinary depth of two and a half meters dug by the Apollo Moonwalkers nearly half a century ago for lunar heat measurements.

Astronauts have also left instruments to measure moonquakes. InSight offers the first seismometers to monitor marsquakes, if they exist. Another experiment will calculate the oscillation of Mars, providing clues to the planet's nucleus.

He will not look for signs of life, past or present. No life detector is on board.

The spacecraft is like an autonomous robot, said lead researcher Bruce Banerdt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"He has his own brain. He has an arm that can handle things around. He can listen with his seismometer. He can sense things with pressure sensors and temperature sensors. He draws his own energy from the sun, "he said.

By exploring the interior of Mars, scientists could learn how our neighbor – and other rocky worlds, including the Earth and the Moon – has formed and transformed into billions of dollars. years. Mars is much less geologically active than Earth and its interior is closer to its initial state – a tempting time capsule.

InSight's goal is to "revolutionize the way we think about the inside of the planet," said Thomas Zurbuchen, head of science mission at NASA.

But first, the 360-kilogram vehicle must reach the Martian surface safely. This time there will be no bouncing balloon with the spaceship inside, as there was for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in 2004. And there will not be any celestial crane to lower the LG like there was for the six wheeled Curiosity during its dramatic "seven minutes of terror".

"It was crazy," acknowledged InSight project manager Tom Hoffman. But he noted, "Every time you try to land on Mars, it's crazy, frankly. I do not think there is a healthy way to do it. "Speech