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A NASA probe designed to search the surface of Mars landed on the red planet on Monday, after a six-month, 482-million-kilometer (300-million-mile) journey and a dangerous descent through the pink atmosphere .
The controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, got up and screamed, applauded and laughed as they heard the news.
"Landing confirmed!" Announced a controller.
A photograph sent from the surface of Mars showed debris stains in the probe chamber, but showed a flat surface with little or no rocks, exactly what scientists expected. In the next hours and days will come better pictures.
The three-foot, billion-dollar InSight spacecraft has returned to the surface after slowing down with the aid of a parachute and brake motors, the space agency said. . The updates came from radio signals that took more than eight minutes to cross the roughly 160 million kilometers (100 million kilometers) separating Mars from the Earth.
It was NASA's ninth attempt at landing on Mars since testing the Viking probe in 1976. All previous US landings, except one, have been successful.
The last landing of NASA on Mars took place in 2012 with the Curiosity probe.
In museums, planetariums and libraries across the country, as well as in Times Square in New York, images of the activity have been shown in the control room of NASA's laboratory.
The plan for the descent was that the probe brakes abruptly, from 19,800 km / h to 12 km / h to zero in six minutes, while she was crossing the Martian atmosphere and perched on the surface.
"Landing on Mars is one of the most difficult tasks that people have to do in global exploration," said InSight Chief Scientist Bruce Banerdt. "It's so difficult, so dangerous, there's always the rather uncomfortable possibility that something is not right."
Mars has been the cemetery of several space missions.
Until now, the Earth's success rate on Mars is 40%, counting all reconnaissance flights, orbital flights and landings as the United States, Russia and other countries have tried since 1960.
However, the United States has managed seven landings on Mars over the past four decades and, with one failure, is an enviable record. No other country has managed to assemble and operate a spacecraft on a dusty red surface.
InSight was heading towards the plain of Eliseo, located near the Martian equator.
The 800-pound stationary probe will use its 1.8-meter (6-foot) robotic arm to place a mechanical bore and a seismometer on the surface. The drill will drill to a depth of 5 meters (16 feet) to measure the internal heat of the planet, while the seismometer will detect possible earthquakes.
No probe has dug more than a few inches on Mars and no seismometer has operated on the planet.
Germany is responsible for the InSight borer, while France manages the seismometer.
By examining the interior of Mars, scientists hope to understand how the rocky planets of our solar system were formed 4.5 billion years ago and why they are so different. Mars is cold and dry, Venus and Mercury are very hot and the Earth is viable to support life.
However, InSight can not detect life. This will remain for future probes, such as NASA's March 2020 mission, which will collect rocks that will eventually be taken to Earth for analysis in search of evidence of ancient life.
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