NASA’s InSight successfully lands on Mars

Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think

The unmanned spacecraft touched down on Mars without problems shortly before 3 p.m. ET on Monday.
It was a precarious landing that NASA engineers had described as “seven minutes of terror.”
InSight will study the interior of Mars, and could help scientists discover the presence of liquid water on the red planet.

NASA’s InSight—a robotic lander designed to study the interior of rocky planets—successfully landed on Mars Monday afternoon, marking the agency’s eighth successful deployment of a spacecraft on the red planet.

It was a precarious landing process that NASA engineers predicted would be “seven minutes of terror.”

“This vehicle is very, very complicated,” Rob Grover, InSight’s entry, descent and landing (EDL) lead, during a NASA live stream on Monday. “It uses 12 engines, each of those engines are pulsed 10 times a second, producing these little tiny impulses, almost like little bullets that keep the vehicle going at a constant velocity as it approaches the ground.”

Grover said the agency had to rely on an algorithm to guide the unmanned lander to the surface.