Touchdown confirmed: InSight lands on Mars



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The InSight lander successfully landed on Mars on Monday, NASA announced Monday.

"Touchdown confirmed.InSight is on the surface of Mars!", NASA reported at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

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Truth hour has arrived for NASA's InSight lander, which is landing Monday afternoon on the surface of Mars, the culmination of a six-month trip over 295 million miles.

The anxiety was great at NASA, who tried for the last time to land on the red planet six years ago.

>> InSight Landing Mission Timeline

"I'm completely excited and completely nervous at the same time," InSight Project Manager Tom Hoffman said Sunday at a press conference at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. "Everything we have done up to now puts us at ease and we feel confident landing on Mars, but Mars could still throw us a curved balloon."

NASA launched the InSight LG on May 5th. This mission, at a cost of $ 850 million, will study the depths of Mars and help scientists understand the formation and early evolution of Mars and other rocky planets, including the Earth .

What makes the landing perilous is that the InSight LG needs to go from 12,300 mph to 5 mph in six minutes, according to Space.com.

>> InSight Lander Mission: Frequently Asked Questions

Meanwhile, the spacecraft must light its downhill engines, deploy its parachutes and land hopefully on the Martian surface, according to The Associated Press.

Even after landing the spacecraft, the InSight team will not know that the solar panels of the stationary spacecraft have deployed until 20:35. EST at the earliest, reported Space.com. It is at this point that the NASA Mars Odyssey Orbiter will be in a position to relay confirmation to Earth.

Only 40 percent of missions sent to Mars have landed successfully on the planet and the United States is the only country to land a craft on the surface, said NASA officials. "Since 1965, he (the United States) has flown over, orbited, landed and evolved on the surface of the red planet."

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