NASA’s InSight spacecraft lands on red planet after six-month journey

NASA’s InSight spacecraft lands on red planet after six-month journey

News:

1. NASA’s robotic InSight lander designed to dig into the rocky Martian surface to reveal its secrets successfully touched down on the Red Planet recently.

Important Facts:

2. The plan called for the spacecraft to go from 12,300 mph (19,800 kph) to zero in six minutes flat as it pierced the Martian atmosphere and settled on the surface.
3. The stationary 800-pound (360-kilogram) lander will use its 6-foot (1.8-metre) robotic arm to place a mechanical mole and seismometer on the ground.
4. The self-hammering mole will burrow 16 feet (5 metres) down to measure the planet’s internal heat, while the seismometer listens for possible quakes.
5. NASA’s InSight mission

• Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (INSIGHT), is a Mars lander designed by NASA to study the deep interior of Mars, taking the planet’s vital signs, its pulse and temperature.
• It is the first outer space robotic explorer to study in-depth the “inner space” of Mars: its crust, mantle, and core, since the planet formed 4.5 billion years ago.
• InSight has three Science Instruments, namely a seismometer, a heat flow probe and a radio science experiment to analyse MARS interior.

6. Background:

• It was NASA’s ninth attempt to land at Mars since the 1976 Viking probes. NASA last landed on Mars in 2012 with the Curiosity rover.

7. Previous landing attempts on Mars:

• Mars has been the graveyard for a multitude of space missions.
• Up to now, the success rate at the red planet has been only 40 percent, counting every attempted flyby, orbital flight and landing by the U.S., Russia and other countries since 1960.
• The U.S., however, has pulled off seven successful Mars landings in the past four decades, not counting InSight, with only one failed touchdown.
• No other country has managed to set and operate a spacecraft on the dusty red surface.