NASA's Mars lander takes selfie from above with robotic arm
Science | December 12, 2018 7:04 ISTThe InSight lander snapped a series of pictures that NASA turned into a stunning mosaic, released on Tuesday.
The InSight lander snapped a series of pictures that NASA turned into a stunning mosaic, released on Tuesday.
Over the past week and a half, mission engineers have been testing these instruments and spacecraft systems, ensuring they are in working order.
NASA’s InSight spacecraft touched down on the sweeping, red equatorial plains Monday, less than 400 miles (640 kilometers) from Curiosity, the only other working robot on Mars.
Early last week, InSight touched down on a lava plain named Elysium Planitia on the Red Planet.
The lander sent signals indicating that its solar panels are open and collecting sunlight on the Martian surface, InSight mission team said in a statement.
The mission objectives of the two small Mars Cube One (MarCO) which relayed InSight's telemetry was completed after their Martian flyby, NASA said in a statement.
Launched on May 5, InSight marks NASA's first Mars landing since the Curiosity rover in 2012 and the first dedicated to studying the deep interior of Mars.
It is going to use seismometers to study the planet's interior so we can learn more about how it formed and why it's so different from Earth, BBC reported on Sunday.
Lying at the boundary of the northern and southern hemisphere, the region is an example of past activity on the planet.
By studying the preserved heart of Mars, InSight can teach us how our solar system’s rocky planets formed 4 1/2 billion years ago and why they turned out so different.
The region, a furrowed, rock-filled escarpment known as Nili Fossae sits at the boundary of the northern and southern hemisphere.
The United States is the only country to successfully operate a spacecraft on the Martian surface. InSight represents NASA's ninth attempt to put a spacecraft on Mars; only one effort failed.
NASA kept the CubeSats about 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometers) away from InSight during the 300 million-mile (483 million-kilometer) journey to Mars.
Phobos' grooves, which are visible across most of the moon's surface, were first identified in the 1970s by NASA's Mariner and Viking missions.
The landing will kick off a two-year mission in which InSight will become the first spacecraft to study Mars' deep interior.
"If Elysium Planitia were a salad, it would consist of romaine lettuce and kale - no dressing," said InSight principal investigator Bruce Banerdt at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
The twin, low-cost MarCO CubeSats, which are sharing a ride with InSight Mars lander, were designed to find out if they could survive the journey to deep space.
The campaign has five strategic goals, including returning US astronauts to the surface of the Moon to demonstrating the capabilities required for human missions to Mars and other destinations.
NASA scientists estimated that the tau over Opportunity to be a little higher than 10 during some points during the dust storm.
It was a landmark day for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as its maiden interplanetary mission- the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), popularly known as Mangalyaan completed four years orbiting the Red Planet.
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