NASA's InSight Lander returns a stunning image of the Martian horizon

NASA's InSight probe (inland exploration using seismic surveys, geodesy and heat transport) successfully completed its soft landing on Mars on Monday after a 300-million-kilometer journey over six months. And he's already sending back photos of the desolate Red Planet from his landing site on the Elysium Planitia, thanks to a message posted on the LG's official Twitter feed that reads, "There is a quiet beauty here. Looking forward to exploring my new home. "

InSight has already deployed its two decagonal solar panels, with a range of 7 feet each, which provide power to the machine. Its mission is to provide information on the formation and evolution of rocky planets like Mars, and it is equipped with instruments including a seismometer, a burrowing heat probe and radio equipment.

According to a statement from NASA, InSight will begin collecting data during its first week of operation, although its Earth-based staff is primarily working on the activation and calibration of its systems. One of the first tasks on his list is to deploy a 5.9-foot robotic arm that will take pictures of the Martian landscape, which will be completed in a few days. It will take time for many of its experiments to develop, as NASA will need a lot of data to decide on the deployment of the seismometer and the thermal probe, and may have to wait again to detect possible seismic activity.

NASA wrote:

"We reached the Martian atmosphere at 19,800 km / h (12,300 mph), and the full surface landing sequence took only six and a half minutes," said Tom Hoffman, Project Manager. InSight at JPL. "During this short period of time, InSight had to autonomously perform dozens of operations and perform them flawlessly – and by all indications, that's exactly what our spacecraft did."

"The landing was exciting, but I'm looking forward to drilling," said Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for InSight, [NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory]. "When the first images fall, our engineering and scientific teams will start planning where to deploy our scientific instruments. Within two to three months, the branch will deploy the main scientific instruments of the mission, Seismic Experiment for Indoor Structures (SEIS) and Heat and Physical Properties (HP) Module.³) instruments. "

This is not the first surface photo transmitted by InSight published by NASA. Another photo released earlier Monday was a blurred photo of the lens-spotted dust cover of the LG, beyond which one can see the Martian horizon.

Prior to landing, InSight also deployed two tiny cubesats named MarCO A and B, which according to CNN are the first to be deployed in deep space. According to the Los Angeles Times, neither machine was an integral part of the mission itself, but it worked perfectly. MarCO B has also sent an additional photo of Mars in orbit. The full data of the two cubesats will take two weeks to reach the Earth. Once their mission is over, they will now enter an elliptical orbit around the Sun, but they should continue to function for a few weeks.

Those of us on Earth may have to wait a bit to hear what InSight is learning about their new country, it has had an amazing introduction.

According to NASA, other institutions that have contributed to its mission are listed below:

A number of European partners, including the National Center for Space Studies (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), support the InSight mission. CNES and the Paris Institute of Earth Physics (IPGP) provided the SEIS instrument, with important contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, from the Swiss Institute of Physics Technology (ETH) in Switzerland, College and Oxford University in the UK, and JPL. DLR has provided the HP3 instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. The Spanish Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) provided the wind sensors.