NASA Lands Spacecraft on Mars

This isn’t science fiction, it is a science reality. On Monday, NASA successfully landed its InSight lander on Mars. And it relayed back its first photo minutes later. This is the very beginning of a two-year exploration.

InSight was in development for almost a decade before this landing. It ultimately cost nearly $1 billion. This touchdown Monday afternoon marked the first time in six years that a NASA spacecraft has landed on the red planet. More than half of all missions to Mars fail to land successfully. But that is just one of the many obstacles in a mission to Mars.

There are transmission complications that mean scientists can only watch on an eight-minute delay. So they are helpless as things either go according to plan, or not according to plan.

Before landing, the spacecraft also had to survive the “seven minutes of terror.” This is a series of risky moves necessary to reach the Elysium Planitia region of Mars, about 400 miles from the Curiosity Rover. InSight will be the first Mars-based mission that will focus on the planet’s interior. There, its stationary lander will drill about 16 feet below the surface.

VICE News spent time with the NASA team that sent InSight to Mars, including Matt Golombek, InSight’s landing site lead.

“InSight has solar power, so it needs to be near the equator so it has enough power to last throughout the year as the seasons change,” Golombek said.

Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator behind NASA’s InSight mission, told VICE News earlier Monday that he was confident the probe would successfully land.

“I’m pretty excited, pretty nervous but really feeling good about where we are with this mission,” Banerdt said. “Everything seems ready to land.”