Wednesday, November 21, 2018

NASA’s InSight lander has just six and a half minutes to land on Mars in one piece

<em>An artistic rendering of InSight landing on Mars</em>

Early next week, NASA will attempt the grueling feat of landing a spacecraft on Mars, hoping to add to its growing collection of tech on the Red Planet’s surface. This time, NASA hopes to place a robotic lander, called InSight, on a flat, boring part of the Martian terrain in order to study the planet’s interior. And to do that, the car-sized robot must perform a perfectly synchronized landing routine — one that will slow the vehicle down from more than 12,000 miles per hour to zero in just six-and-a-half minutes.

Launched on May 5th from California, InSight has been traveling through space for the last six months and is scheduled to enter Mars’ atmosphere on Monday, November 26th. During its descent to the surface, the lander will be...

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