The InSight probe arrives on Mars to unveil its mysteries

Pasadena.- "Landing confirmed!": The American InSight probe landed on Martian soil on Monday and has already sent the first photo of the surface of the red planet.

After seven years of work and seven months of space travel, the American InSight spacecraft is "armed" and sent the image shortly thereafter.

Every successful step in this milky, risky operation sparked a hubbub in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) control center in Pasadena, California.

"The confirmed landing" in the voice of the controller pushed the rest of her controlled colleagues to scream for joy and kiss to celebrate.

This is the first time since 2012 that an artifact has landed on Mars, after NASA's Curiosity vehicle, the only one currently active on the Red Planet.

Only the United States managed to place artifacts there, investing in these missions in order to prepare for a future incursion with human explorers for the 2030s.

"My first picture on Mars"
The process of installation was perfect: activation of the parachute, deployment of his legs and reduction of the speed from 19,800 km / h to 8 km / h in just seven minutes.

NASA "finalized the algorithm that guides the spacecraft to the surface" a few hours before entering the atmosphere, where the temperature reached 1,500 ° C.

The spacecraft traveled 480 million kilometers at a speed of about 20,000 km / h, three to four times faster than a rifle bullet, to reach a rectangular zone of about 10 km on 24 km.

The first photo was sent by two satellites that accompanied InSight during its crossing to Mars.
3D Mars
This $ 993 million probe is expected to listen and scrutinize the interior of Mars for about two years, trying to unravel the mysteries of its formation billions of years ago.

Knowledge that could later better understand the formation of the Earth, the only rocky planet from which its interior has really been studied.
Elizabeth Barrett, director of operations at JPL, said it would take two to three months to place all the instruments on the surface and that another pair would start receiving the data.

The goal is to build a three-dimensional map of the planet, so that "we can understand inside Mars as well as outside," said Bruce Banerdt, senior project researcher at JPL.