InSight Mars Landing

On November 26th, a rover landed on Mars for the mission InSight. It had been heading to Mars for about six months. The purpose of the rover was to take pictures and place a seismometer to observe the seismic activity of Mars and get an idea of what is inside Mars. It will also measure the heat and see if there's earth quakes, or should I say mars-quakes. The signal would go around the planet several times.

To increase performance and the speed we would get the picture, the shuttle that sent the rover also released two laptop sized satellites called MarCO, Mars Cube One. The role of MarCO isn't a must for it to work, but it would help.

The launch vehicle used to send it into space was an Atlas V-405. The rover had twelve engines that would pulse ten times every second to descend onto the surface of Mars. The rover would make sure it was on a good flat surface to let out it's solar panels. Thankfully, it landed They waited for the dust to settle around the rover to take a picture and in a few minutes, they got this picture:

It's a little hard to see with the debris and dust on the dust cover, but eventually the dust cover would be taken off for more clear pictures. But at the bottom of the picture, you can see a rock, and you can see the horizon. At that current moment, everyone was joyful that it worked. Here is a clearer picture when the lens cover was taken off.

Rovers that are sent to Mars sometimes they go missing, for example: in June of 2018, NASA has not been able to contact the rover, Opportunity, after a dust storm when it went into hibernation. NASA does not know if they will be able to regain control, which is why the fact that another being sent up there is a good thing. InSight has a thicker heat shield which will help protect it from the possibility of a dust storm.

In other space news, today, on December 3rd, three people are going to go up to the international space station. Anne McClain from the USA, David Saint-Jacques from Canada, and Oleg Kononenko from Russia.