NASA’s InSight - Ten Days Until Touchdown on Mars

Posted by Guy Pirro | 11/17/2018 11:31PM | 0 Comments

NASA’s current mission to Mars -- InSight -- is expected to land on the Red Planet on November 26, 2018. Only about 40 percent of the missions ever sent to Mars -- by any space agency -- have been successful. The US is the only nation whose missions have survived a Mars landing. The thin atmosphere -- just 1 percent of Earth’s -- means that there’s little friction to slow down a spacecraft. Despite that, NASA has had a long and successful track record at Mars. Since 1965, it has flown-by, orbited, landed on, and roved across the surface of the Red Planet. InSight, short for “Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport,” is designed to give Mars its first thorough check-up since it formed 4.5 billion years ago. InSight complements the numerous missions that are orbiting Mars and roving around on the planet's surface. The lander's science instruments will look for tectonic activity and meteorite impacts on Mars, study how much heat is still flowing through the planet, and track the planet's wobble as it orbits the Sun. This will help answer key questions about how the rocky planets of the Solar System formed.