By Millie Love, Past Writer and Assignments Editor
On the 26th of November 2018 NASA’s mission to Mars, named Insight, safely landed on the surface of the red planet. Read on to discover more about its fascinating journey
On the 26th of November 2018 NASA’s mission to Mars, named Insight, safely landed on the surface of the red planet. The mission originally launched on the 5th of May 2018 with the hopes of taking pictures of Mars' atmosphere. Altogether the Insight spacecraft travelled an astounding 300 million miles on its journey to Mars. NASA, however, had their worries about the mission due to the heavy, expensive equipment and what would happen on landing.
But from a idea to launching a spacecraft into the atmosphere, there is a lot of hard work and effort that goes into planning a successful mission. Insight’s mission took pre planning, designing, assembly and testing and instrument selection for the spacecraft. Soon before the the team knew it, it was 5th of May - launch day, and everything went to plan. Soon the mission was fully underway.
After the 60 day journey, Insight went in for landing to Mars. NASA predicted the descent into the atmosphere will take 7 minutes. During that time, the spacecraft had to avoid dust and rock. The mission control centre, at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) , waited in silence, to receive data back from Insight. Finally, the results came through and the mission was successful, Everyone in mission control was relieved and excited for the results to come.
But what exactly is the Mission intending to do? For decades scientists have wondered how planets originate and what happened in their past. The mission will hopefully uncover some secrets into Mars underneath the surface. It will use it’s high tech equipment on board to scan beneath the ground and it will also picture its underground findings as well as the surroundings of the spacecraft itself. To help it do this, It has a robotic arm on board to move instruments around, Some wind and temperature sensors, a monitoring camera, solar panels, seismometers that will record any movement of the earth, The RISE antenna and the heat flow probe that burrows 5m underground to measure the temperature of Mars’s crust.
Soon after the mission touch downed on Mars successfully, The first picture from its surroundings came through to mission control. The image was contained shortly after landing and will help NASA for years to come to find out more about the famous red planet. They are hopeful for the mission and many interesting discoveries that will come with it. Right now the public is waiting for more news on Insight and it’s inspiring journey.
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