NASA’s InSight spacecraft set for touch down on the red planet

NASA's InSight spacecraft is all set to touch down on Mars on November 26, after a six-month, 300 million miles (480 million kilometres) journey. InSight marks NASA's first Mars landing since the Curiosity rover in 2012. The touchdown is scheduled at approximately 1:30 am IST, according to NASA. NASA’s InSight spacecraft will enter the Martian atmosphere at supersonic speed, then hit the brakes to get to a soft, safe landing on the alien red plains.

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InSight, the first mission to study the deep interior of Mars, blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California on May 5, 2018. 

"InSight is going to Mars to study the deep interior of Mars to understand how the land is formed," Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator, told a press briefing on Wednesday. 

"Each planet is different. Mercury has a sun-baked surface. Mars is pretty cold today. Earth is a nice place to take a vacation. We really like to know why one planet goes one way, and another planet goes another way," he said. 

"Those answers are in the details of the structure that formed very early in the planet history," Banerdt added. 

"There's a reason engineers call landing on Mars 'seven minutes of terror,'" said Rob Grover, InSight's entry, descent and landing (EDL) lead, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "We can't joystick the landing, so we have to rely on the commands we pre-program into the spacecraft. We've spent years testing our plans, learning from other Mars landings and studying all the conditions Mars can throw at us. And we're going to stay vigilant till InSight settles into its home in the Elysium Planitia region."

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Unlike the Curiosity rover, Insight won’t be able to move about on Mars. But using a suite of instruments and a seven-foot-long robotic arm, it will drill up to 16 feet below the surface at its landing site, Elysium Planitia, a broad plain that has been called “the biggest parking lot on Mars.”