‘Flawless’ landing on Mars for NASA’s InSight
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. >> A NASA spacecraft designed to drill down into Mars’ interior landed on the planet 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 across 100 million miles of space.
Flight controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, leapt out of their chairs, screaming, dancing and hugging, upon learning that InSight’s had safely arrived on Mars, the graveyard for a multitude of previous missions.
“Touchdown confirmed!” a flight controller called out, touching off a celebration that was a complete turnaround from the nail-biting anxiety that gripped the control room as the spacecraft made its six-minute descent.
Confirmation came minutes later from a pair of tiny satellites that had been trailing InSight throughout the six-month, 300-million-mile journey.
The two experimental satellites not only relayed the good news in almost real time, they sent back InSight’s first snapshot of Mars just 4½ minutes after landing. The picture was speckled with debris because the dust cover was still on the lander’s camera, but the terrain looked smooth and sandy with just one sizable rock visible — pretty much what scientists had hoped for. Better photos are expected in the days ahead.
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 favor.”
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, presiding over his first Mars landing as the space agency’s boss, said: “What an amazing day for our country.”
He said it was a little strange to realize that by the time word arrived, history had already been made eight minutes earlier because of the lag in communication between Mars and Earth.
Indeed, by the time word of touchdown came from space just after 3 p.m. EST, InSight was already well settled on the western side of Elysium Planitia, the flatas-a-parking-lot plain that NASA was aiming for.
Many Mars-bound spacecraft launched by the U.S., Russia and other spacefaring countries, have been lost or destroyed over the years, with a success rate of just 40 percent, not counting InSight.
NASA went with its old, straightforward approach this time, using a parachute and braking engines to get InSight’s speed from 12,300 mph when it pierced the Martian atmosphere, about 77 miles up, to 5 mph at touchdown.
Flight controllers were relieved to find out promptly that Insight made it to the surface and didn’t burn up in the atmosphere or bounce off it.
Museums, planetariums and libraries across the U.S. held viewing parties to watch the events unfold at JPL. NASA TV coverage was also shown on the giant screen in New York’s Times Square, where crowds huddled under umbrellas in the rain.
The $1 billion international mission features a German-led mechanical mole that will burrow down 16 feet to measure the planet’s internal heat. Nothing has ever dug deeper into Mars than several inches. The lander also has a Frenchmade seismometer for measuring quakes, if they exist on our smaller, geologically calmer neighbor.