NASA’s InSight Mars Lander has safely landed on the planet’s surface.<\/b>
\nIn this image provided by NASA, Mars InSight team members Kris Bruvold, left, and Sandy Krasner rejoice, Monday, Nov. 26,2018, inside the Mission Support Area at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., after receiving confirmation that the Mars InSight lander successfully touched down on the surface of Mars. (Bill Ingalls\/NASA via AP) ASSOCIATED PRESS
NASA’s InSight Mars Lander has safely landed on the planet’s surface.
After over six months of space travel — launching May 5 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base and subsequently covering 300M miles — NASA’s InSight Mars Lander survived the dangerous trip to the surface of the red planet. Only half of the spacecraft to make such trips have survived; this marks only the eighth time NASA has successfully touched down on Mars.
The probe immediately got to work, including sending its first pictures of the planet:
A image transmitted from Mars by the InSight lander is seen on a computer screen at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Monday, Nov. 26,2018, in Pasadena, Calif. (NASA via AP) ASSOCIATED PRESS
The remaining obstacle for the rover is to unfurl its solar array so that it can power the instruments it has on-board to study the planet — a task which should be successfully completed within the next few hours .
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As the name implies, this probe is designed to gather data about Mars’ history and present — studying the ‘Martian underworld’ and listening for marsquakes — to deduce more about the formation and seismic activity of the world. To do so, InSight is equipped with seismometer, a heat probe, and RISE antennas — a radio experiment designed to measure the wobble of the planet in its orbit around the sun.
The (now-completed) livestream of the event can be seen below:
Jesse is an entrepreneur, advisor, journalist, and public figure in emerging technology. He is Editor-at-Large of VRScout, Series Editor of Best American Experimental Writing, and CEO of Galatea, a writing and project management tool for VR and AR stories. He covers XR, bloc…
Jesse Damiani is Editor-at-Large of VRScout, Series Editor of Best American Experimental Writing, and CEO of Galatea, a screenwriting and project management tool for AR and VR stories.<\/p>\n