InSight lander touches down on Mars – as it happened

Well that all went smoothly. InSight touched down on Mars at 2.52:59pm ET, a successful landing after an almost seven-month journey through deep space.

The probe immediately went to work, aiming to activate its solar panels before beginning the weeks-long process of setting instruments in place.

Once InSight’s robotic arm has set out its equipment, including a seismometer which will monitor for marsquakes, it will drill 5m down into Mars’s crust, to assess the planet’s temperature. InSight will then begin to send data to Nasa.

The mission is set to last for two Earth years – which is a little over one Mars year. The information it gathers should help scientists to better understand how Earth and other planets in the solar system were formed at the dawn of the solar system – 4.6bn years ago.

Over at Space.com writer Lee Cavendish has some good background information on what the InSight mission is aiming to achieve:

About 4.5 billion years ago, the eight planets of our solar system were formed. All eight planets were formed from a clumpy disk of rock, ice and debris orbiting the young sun.

Fast-forward to the present and we now see a distinct difference between the inner and outer planets. The terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) all have a dense, rocky structure, with only one able to support life.

The Jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) are all primarily gas and swollen up to enormous sizes. The question that astronomers still can’t answer, though, is how did these terrestrial planets form and evolve?

By drilling beneath Mars’s surface, Cavendish writes: “The heat flow within Mars could be compared to Earth’s and reveal that both were formed from the same substances, and if they aren’t, then why not.”

Nasa helped organize viewing parties for the InSight landing around the US and Europe. One was in Times Square, where the live stream from Nasa control was broadcast on one of the big advertising boards:

The official time of InSight’s landing was 2.52:59 pm ET, according to Nasa. The people behind the landing are very pleased.

“We hit the Martian atmosphere at 12,300 mph (19,800 kilometers per hour), and the whole sequence to touching down on the surface took only six-and-a-half minutes,” said Tom Hoffman, InSight project manager at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“During that short span of time, InSight had to autonomously perform dozens of operations and do them flawlessly — and by all indications that is exactly what our spacecraft did.”

The next milestone for the space agency is confirmation that InSight’s solar panels have deployed. Then it can get to work.

“We are solar powered, so getting the arrays out and operating is a big deal,” Hoffman said. “With the arrays providing the energy we need to start the cool science operations, we are well on our way to thoroughly investigate what’s inside of Mars for the very first time.”

Here’s a video from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California as InSight lands safely:

The Guardian’s science editor has filed a news story on InSight’s successful landing, and on what Nasa hopes the probe will achieve.

The $814m (£633m) lander will draw on a suite of instruments to study the makeup and dimensions of the planet’s core, mantle and crust. Armed with that data, scientists hope to learn how Mars - and other rocky worlds - formed at the dawn of the solar system 4.6bn years ago.

Earth’s rotating molten iron core generates the magnetic field that shields life from harmful radiation, and helps prevent the atmosphere from being stripped away by high energy particles in the solar wind. At some point in its history, Mars lost its magnetic field, and much of its atmosphere, causing temperatures to drop and exposing the surface to intense radiation. InSight may help explain why, said [Rain] Irshad, [the autonomous systems group leader at RAL Space in Oxfordshire, and one of several UK scientists who worked on InSight’s instruments.]

“Are there conditions under the surface that might have meant life went down there in order to survive?” she said. “If it retreated beneath the surface, future missions might find it there.”

More from Pence:

The view from Mars:

InSight was due to begin its “surface operations” one minute after touchdown, according to Nasa.

The probe will begin by assessing its landing site, sending back images of the ground and the area within reach of its robotic arm.

Once Nasa has a good idea of InSight’s surroundings, the craft will begin placing scientific instruments over the ground, which could take up to three months.

It will take another seven weeks for InSight to sink its probe into the Martian ground – down to a depth of five meters (16ft) – then the craft will sit quietly in place, collecting data and beaming it back to Earth.

Mike Pence has called Nasa to say he is “absolutely ecstatic” at the InSight landing.

Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine said the vice-president called him moments after landing to pass on congratulations.

“To have him call within seconds of mission success is incredible,” Bridenstine said.

Pence has become the Trump administration’s go-to person on space-related topics, touring a number of Nasa facilities over the past two years.