Touchdown on Mars! NASA's InSight Lands to Peer Inside the Red Planet
Source: Space.com
PASADENA, Calif. — Mars just welcomed a new robotic resident.
NASA's InSight lander touched down safely on the Martian surface today (Nov. 26), pulling off the first successful Red Planet landing since the Curiosity rover's arrival in August 2012 — on the seventh anniversary of Curiosity's launch, no less.
"It was intense, and you could feel the emotion," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who was in the control room here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory during the landing. "It was very, very quiet when it was time to be quiet and of course very celebratory with every little new piece of information that was received. It's very different being here than watching it on TV, by far, I can tell you that for sure now that I've experienced both." [NASA's InSight Mars Lander: Full Coverage]
Signals confirming InSight's touchdown came down to Earth at 2:53 p.m. EST (1953 GMT), eliciting whoops of joy and relief from mission team members and NASA officials here at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages the InSight mission. A few minutes later, the team received confirmation from the lander's radio that it's functioning after the landing.
Kris Bruvold, left, and Sandy Krasner react after receiving confirmation that the Mars InSight lander successfully touched down on the surface of Mars
Read more: https://www.space.com/42541-mars-insight-lander-success.html
Yeah, Sheldon, Leonard, Raj and Howard!
= new reply since forum marked as read
over and over and over on everything scientific.
And yet, when it comes to climate change, we're expected to believe there is still a debate and the science is unclear. Are we can trust what nonscientists have to say more than what scientists have to say?
Fuck conservatives!
Once the sequence is set in motion, the JPL engineers and scientists are along for the ride, with signals taking 8 minutes to get from Mars to Earth. Here's a brief animation of the process:
The chattering sound you hear toward the end are the 12 pulse jet rockets that fire spurts of gas--similar to a fire extinguisher--to both slow the spacecraft and keep it level. Even so, it was going 5 mph when it touched down.
You just know that as it was landing everyone who had a hand a hand in designing, manufacturing and testing a piece of equipment is running their role in the mission over and over in their mind, breathing a sigh once its purpose (e.g., the supersonic parachute) has completed its purpose successfully.
And let's not forget the two MarCOs cubesats, which relayed signals from the landing in realtime, so they didn't have to be collected by the MRO (Mars Reconnaisance Observer) and transmitted to Earth hours later. They were designed and built by young JPL scientists and college students using off-the-shelf equipment for the most part. Expecting one would fail they sent two--neither malfunctioned.
Time for those who took part in making the mission work to dig out their t-shirts:
I know there's a huge delay between radio communication for these distant space craft. Which is even more extraordinary that scientists have that exact delay measured out to perfection as well.
Each celestial body has it's own gravity and they know what that is, even use it to sling space craft along, like the Voyagers. Just amazing.
I'll never be as smart as these rocket scientists, but I'm smart enough to realize that as well. 
