NASA’s new Mars lander will be touching down on the planet’s surface today at approximately 3:00 PM Eastern Time. Provided, of course, that nothing goes horribly wrong and the lander doesn’t impact the surface in a massive, fiery ball.
The lander is the linchpin of the InSight mission, the goal of which is to record topographical and geological data about Mars for our scientists’ reference. Via multiple means of analysis, the lander will also attempt to get a read on Mars’ internal state, including its temperature and elemental makeup.
The lander has traveled a good 301,223,981 miles at around 6,200 miles per hour, but despite that lazy cruise from Earth to Mars, the toughest part comes at the very end. As the lander nears the Martian surface, NASA techs won’t be able to remotely control it, leaving only the lander’s on-board computer to figure things out itself. The engineers have programmed a landing sequence into the lander, and ideally, it’ll be able to do the real thing no problem, but there could always be extraneous factors that weren’t taken into account, such as space debris or adverse Martian weather conditions. When the landing sequence begins, it’ll be a tense seven minutes as NASA watches the lander do its thing. “We’ve spent years testing our plans, learning from other Mars landings and studying all the conditions Mars can throw at us,” InSight Descent and Landing lead Rob Grover said on NASA’s website. “And we’re going to stay vigilant till InSight settles into its home in the Elysium Planitia region.”
