Spacecraft survives Mars touchdown
MINUTES after touching down on Mars, Nasa’s InSight spacecraft sent back a “nice and dirty” snapshot of its new digs. Yet the dust-speckled image looked like a work of art to scientists.
The photograph revealed a mostly smooth and sandy terrain around the spacecraft with only one sizeable rock visible.
“I’m very, very happy that it looks like we have an incredibly safe and boring landing location,” project manager Tom Hoffman said after Monday’s touchdown. “That’s exactly what we were going for.”
A better image came hours later and more are expected in the days ahead, after the dust covers come off the lander’s cameras.
“Touchdown confirmed!” a flight controller called out, setting off jubilation among scientists at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who had waited in whiteknuckle suspense for word to reach across 160 million kilometres of space.
It was Nasa’s eighth successful landing at Mars since the 1976 Viking probes, and the first in six years. Nasa’s Curiosity rover, which arrived in 2012, is still on the move on Mars.
Because of the distance between Earth and Mars, it took eight minutes for confirmation to arrive, relayed by a pair of tiny satellites that had been trailing it.
InSight, a $1 billion (R13bn) international project, includes a German mechanical mole that will burrow down 5m to measure Mars’ internal heat.
The lander also has a French seismometer for measuring quakes, if they exist on our smaller, geologically calmer neighbour.
Over the next few “sols” – or Martian days of 24 hours, 39½ minutes – flight controllers will assess the health of InSight’s all-important robot arm and its science instruments. It will take months to set up and fine-tune the instruments, and lead scientist Bruce Banerdt said he doesn’t expect to start getting a stream of solid data until late next spring.
The 360kg InSight is stationary and will operate from the same spot for the next two years, the duration of a Martian year.
Nasa went with its old, straightforward approach this time, using a parachute and braking engines to get InSight’s speed from 19 800km/h when it pierced the Martian atmosphere, about 114km up, to 8km/h at touchdown.
After InSight landed, the two experimental satellites zoomed past Mars, their main job done. One took one last photo of the Red Planet that the satellite’s chief engineer, Andy Klesh, titled “farewell to InSight ... farewell to Mars.” OPERATIONS at Yemen’s lifeline port of Hodeidah have nearly halved in two weeks, with shipping companies deterred by insecurity in the flashpoint Houthi-held city, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said yesterday.
A Saudi-led Arab coalition is fighting to oust the Iran-backed Houthi movement that has taken over most of northern Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, and restore President AbdRabbu Mansour Hadi to full control.
As 70% of imports come in through the vital Hodeidah port, a drop in the AUTHORITIES in Myanmar have seized a boat carrying 93 people, apparently Rohingya Muslims fleeing displacement camps in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State and hoping to reach Malaysia, an official said yesterday.
The boat is believed to be the third bound for Malaysia stopped in Myanmar waters since monsoon rains began to subside last month, bringing calmer weather, raising fears of a fresh wave of hazardous voyages after a 2015 crackdown on people smugglers.
The navy stopped the boat on Sunday arrival of wheat and other supplies would affect food stocks in Yemen where 14 million people are facing possible starvation after nearly four years of war, WFP said.
The WFP, which provides rations to 8 million Yemenis each month, has been trying to scale up to avert famine. It has two more months worth of food stocks in the impoverished country.
On Monday, a single vessel was at Hodeidah port, which was not normal for a port whose current offloading capacity is for seven vessels. and detained the 93 people, who said they had come from the Thae Chaung camp in the Rakhine State capital of Sittwe, he said.
Thae Chaung is about 900km northwest of Dawei and holds internally displaced people, most of whom are stateless Rohingya.
The UN refugee agency has said Myanmar must “address the root causes of displacement”, including the lack of citizenship for the Rohingya, who consider themselves native to Rakhine State.