‘Flawless’: Nasa craft lands on Mars after perilous trip
CAPE CANAVERAL: A Nasa spacecraft designed to drill down into Mars’ interior landed on the planet on Monday after a perilous, supersonic plunge through its red skies, setting off jubilation among scientists who had waited in white-knuckle suspense for confirmation to arrive.
Flight controllers at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, leaped out of their chairs, screaming, dancing and hugging, upon learning that InSight had arrived on Mars, the graveyard for a multitude of previous missions.
“Touchdown confirmed!” a flight controller called out just before 3pm EST, instantly dispelling the anxiety that had gripped the control room as the spacecraft made its six-minute descent.
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 InSight throughout the six-month, 482-millionkilometre journey.
The two satellites not only transmitted the good news in almost real time, they also sent back InSight’s first snapshot of Mars just four minutes after landing.
The picture was speckled with dirt because the dust cover was still on the lander’s camera, but the terrain around the spacecraft looked smooth and sandy with just one sizeable rock visible — pretty much what scientists had hoped for. Better photos are expected in the days ahead, after the dust covers come off.
It was Nasa’s — indeed, humanity’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.
“Flawless,” declared JPL’s chief engineer, Rob Manning. “This is what we really hoped and imagined in our mind’s eye,” he added. “Sometimes things work out in your favour.”
Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine, presiding over his first Mars landing as the space agency’s boss, said: “What an amazing day for our country.”
InSight, a US$1 billion (33 billion baht) international project, includes a German mechanical mole that will burrow down 5 metres to measure Mars’ internal heat.
“In the coming months and years even, history books will be rewritten about the interior of Mars,” said JPL’s director, Michael Watkins.