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NASA’s InSight probe touches down on Mars
After a seven-month, 500-million-kilometre (300-million-mile) journey, NASA’s Mars InSight probe has successfully touched down on the Elysium Planitia, a vast, smooth lava plain near Mars’s equator. Mission scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California cheered when the lander came to a rest at 19:53 on Monday 26th November 2018. Its descent began just seven minutes earlier when the spacecraft hit the thin Martian atmosphere at 20,000 km/h (12,300 mph)—faster than a high-velocity bullet. Soon afterwards, the lander released its parachute. It then blasted off its heat shield and fired 12 retro-thrusters to slow its descent.
Sending a space probe to Mars is a high-risk operation: only 40% of missions have succeeded. In 2016, the European Space Agency attempted to put the Schiaparelli probe on Mars, but the lander's retro-rockets shut down too early and it smashed into the ground.
Two miniature satellites, each no bigger than briefcases, were sent to Mars along with the lander. Called Mars Cube One, or MarCO, A and B, they relayed InSight's signals back to Earth during the plunge to the surface.
InSight, which is short for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, will use its instruments to study the size and composition of the planet’s interior. Using this information, scientists hope to learn how Mars formed 4.6 billion years ago. One mystery is why Mars, a planet less dense and half the width of Earth, did not grow any larger.
A seismometer, to be placed on the Martian surface by the lander's robotic arm, will detect any tremors produced when rocks deep beneath the surface slip past one another along fault lines. Just as on Earth, shock waves from these "Marsquakes" will reveal information about Mars's interior. The seismometer—the first to be placed on Mars—is so sensitive it can detect vibrations smaller than the width of an atom. Even the minuscule uplift of the ground caused by the gravitational pull of Mars’s moon, Phobos, should be registered.
A second instrument is a heat probe. Shaped like a spear, it will be thrust 5 metres (16 feet) into the ground and will measure the rate at which heat rises through the planet. This will reveal how tectonically active Mars still is.
In a third experiment, scientists will use the lander's antennae to plot its position extremely accurately. They can then work out the exact amount by which Mars "wobbles" as it spins on its axis. This will in turn reveal the size of its core and whether it is molten or solid. Earth’s rotating molten iron outer core generates a magnetic field. Mars, however, has has lost its magnetic field. InSight may help explain why.
All images NASA/JPL-Caltech