The lander operated by NASA and built by scientists in the U. S., France and Germany touched down in the vast, red expanse just before 3 p.m. Eastern on Monday<\/b>
\nFor the eighth time ever, humanity has achieved one of the toughest tasks in the solar system: landing a spacecraft on Mars.
The InSight lander, operated by NASA and built by scientists in the U. S., France and Germany, touched down in the vast, red expanse of Mars\u2019 Elysium Planitia just before 3 p.m. Eastern Monday.
There it will operate for the next two Earth years, deploying a seismometer, a heat sensor and radio antenna to probe the Red Planet\u2019s interior. Scientists hope that InSight will uncover signs of tectonic activity and clues about the planet\u2019s past. Those findings could illuminate how Mars became the desolate desert world we see today.
Mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, erupted in laughter, applause, hugs and tears as soon as the lander touched down.
\u201cThat was awesome,\u201d one woman said, wiping her eyes and clasping her colleague\u2019s hand. A few minutes later, a splotchy red and brown image appeared on the control room\u2019s main screen \u2014 InSight\u2019s first photograph from its new home.
Just getting to the surface of Mars is no mean feat
\u201cThis thing has a lot more to do,\u201d said entry, descent and landing systems engineer Rob Grover. \u201cBut just getting to the surface of Mars is no mean feat.\u201d
The interminable stretch from the moment a spacecraft hits the Martian atmosphere to the second it touches down on the Red Planet\u2019s rusty surface is what scientists call \u201cthe seven minutes of terror.\u201d
Landing a spacecraft on Mars is as difficult as it sounds. More than half of all missions don\u2019t make it safely to the surface. Because it takes more than seven minutes for light signals to travel 100 million miles to Earth, scientists have no control over the process. All they can do is program the spacecraft with their best technology and wait.
The tension was palpable Monday morning in the control room at JPL, where InSight was built and will be operated. At watch parties around the globe \u2014 NASA\u2019s headquarters in Washington, the Nasdaq tower in Times Square, the grand hall of the Museum of Sciences and Industry in Paris, a public library in Haines, Alaska, \u2014 legs jiggled and fingers were crossed as minutes ticked toward the beginning of entry, descent and landing.
At about 11:47 a.m., engineers received a signal indicating InSight had entered the Martian atmosphere. The spacecraft plummeted to the planet\u2019s surface at a pace of 12,300 miles per hour. Within two minutes, the friction roasted InSight\u2019s heat shield to a blistering 2,700 degrees. In another two minutes, a supersonic parachute deployed to help slow down the spacecraft. Radar was powered on.
Flawless. This is what we really hoped and imagined in our minds eye
From there, the most critical descent checklist unfolded at a rapid clip: 15 seconds to separate the heat shield. Ten seconds to deploy the legs. Activate the radar. Jettison the back shell. Fire the retrorockets. Orient for landing.
At 12:01 p.m., scientists heard a tiny X-band radio beep \u2014 a signal that InSight is active and functioning on the Red Planet.
\u201cFlawless,\u201d Grover said. \u201cFlawless. This is what we really hoped and imagined in our minds eye.
The mission\u2019s objective is to determine what Mars is made of and how it has changed since it formed more than 4 billion years ago. The results could help solve the mystery of how the Red Planet became the dry, desolate world we know it as today.
Early in its history, Mars may have looked a lot like Earth. Magnetization in ancient rocks suggest it had a global magnetic field like that of Earth, powered by a churning mantle and metallic core. The field would have protected the planet from radiation, allowing it to hold on to an atmosphere much thicker than the one that exists now. This, in turn, likely enabled liquid water to pool on Mars\u2019s surface. Images from satellites reveal the outlines of long-gone lakes, deltas and river-carved canyons.
But the last 3 billion years have been a slow-motion disaster for the Red Planet. The dynamo died, the magnetic field faltered, the water evaporated and more than half of the atmosphere was stripped away by solar winds. The InSight mission was designed to find out why.
That means the team now can watch the data flowing onto their screens
There is no orbiting spacecraft in the right position around Mars to relay real time information about InSight\u2019s entry descent and landing back to Earth. But as InSight makes its precarious descent, NASA hoped to learn about its status via the MarCo satellites \u2014 tiny twin experimental spacecraft known as CubeSats that accompanied the lander on its flight to Mars. Each has solar arrays, a color camera and an antenna for relaying communications from the Martian surface back to Earth.
About 10 minutes before landing, the control room at JPL erupted in applause \u2014 both MarCo satellites were working.
\u201cThat means the team now can watch the data flowing onto their screens,\u201d said Grover.
Success during this mission may provide \u201ca possible model for a new kind of interplanetary communications relay,\u201d systems engineer Anne Marinan said in a NASA news release last week.
NASA should know whether the lander\u2019s solar arrays have deployed by Monday evening, thanks to recordings from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The agency also will get its first clear images of the spacecraft\u2019s landing site \u2014 a vast, flat, almost featureless plain near the equator known as Elysium Planitia.
\u201cThen the mission really will start,\u201d said Jim Green, NASA\u2019s chief scientist.
Unlike Opportunity and Curiosity, the rovers that trundle across Mars in search of interesting rocks, InSight is designed to sit and listen. Using its dome-shaped seismic sensor, scientists hope to detect tiny tremors associated with meteorite impacts, dust stormperhaps s and \u201cmarsquakes\u201d generated by the cooling of the planet\u2019s interior. As seismic waves ripple through, they will be distorted by changes in the materials they encounter \u2014 plumes of molten rock or reservoirs of liquid water \u2014 revealing what\u2019s under the planet\u2019s surface.
InSight\u2019s seismometer is so sensitive it can detect tremors smaller than a hydrogen atom. But it also must be robust enough to survive the perilous process of landing. Nothing like it has been deployed on any planet, even Earth.
Designing this instrument, said principal investigator Philippe Lognonn\u00e9, \u201cwas not only a technical adventure, but a human adventure.\u201d
InSight also has a drill capable of burrowing 16 feet \u2014 deeper than any Mars instrument. From there, it can take Mars\u2019s temperature to determine how much heat is still flowing out of the body of the planet. Meanwhile, two antennae will precisely track the lander\u2019s location to determine how much Mars wobbles as it orbits the sun.
The insights from InSight won\u2019t only add to what we know about Mars; they could provide clues to things that happened on Earth billions of years ago. Most records of Earth\u2019s early history have been lost to the inexorable churn of plate tectonics, explained Suzanne Smrekar, the mission\u2019s deputy principal investigator.
\u201cMars gives us an opportunity to see the materials, the structure, the chemical reactions that are close to what we see in the interior of Earth, but it\u2019s preserved,\u201d she said. \u201cIt gives us a chance to go back in time.\u201d<\/p>\n