Nasa has successfully landed on Mars – so what now? The mission was so difficult that it was described as “as hard as a basketball thrown from New York into a basket in Los Angeles.”
Project: InSight
Location: Mars
Mission: Expanding the Human Horizon
The InSight lander which launched early this year finally arrived at Mars and successfully landed on the planet’s surface, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was overjoyed that all their hard work and planning over the past 8+ years had ultimately paid off.
The InSight lander has to find its feet and get accustomed to its surroundings, first, working out where it stands in the harsh world of the red planet.
The spacecraft, which descended safely to the surface, was able to send us images in the powder-coated camera and robotic arm in minutes after the descent.
Although one of the images shows a blurred image due to dust particles and lens protector, it can be seen that the descending ground is smooth and rocky. That’s exactly what NASA was planning.
After a successful landing, NASA has already started to fill the solar panels with Insight’s solar panels. These panels, which can produce 600-700 watts on a clean day, will be reduced to 200-300 watts in the dusty weather that Insight will cope with on most days, but InSight will be able to continue even at these values.
In the coming days, the InSight robotic arm with the camera around the ground is expected to take photographs of the photos. Thus, engineers will try to find the most suitable position for scientific instruments such as the seismograph that the probe will leave. All scientific instruments to be brought to the surface and fully activated, if no problems will occur approximately two or three months. After this process, InSight will be able to continue with 100 percent capacity analysis.
While engineers around the world are busy exploring the surrounding ground, InSight will make measurements at its new and permanent house, Elysium Planitia, with sensors and magnetometers to measure the weather.
InSight will explore Mars’ inner structure, tectonics, nucleus, heat and many more secrets… will help us understand.
That will take a matter of months. Once everything’s in place, the heat probe will have to actually hammer itself deep down into the Martian surface, using special technology to dig five meters down.
Altogether, that’s likely take as many as five months. After that, the actual science work that InSight aims to do will begin properly.
Thanks NASA, Good luck InSight!
