CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. | A NASA spacecraft’s six-month journey to Mars approached its dramatic grand finale Monday in what scientists and engineers hoped would be a soft precision landing on flat red plains.
The InSight lander targeted an afternoon touchdown, as anxiety built among those involved in the $1 billion international effort.
InSight’s descent through the Martian atmosphere, after a trip of 300 million miles, had the stomachs of NASA scientists churning and nerves stretched to the max. Although an old pro at this, NASA last attempted a landing at Mars six years ago.
The robotic geologist — created to explore Mars’ mysterious insides — must go from 12,300 mph to zero in six minutes flat as it pierces the Martian atmosphere, pops out a parachute, fires its descent engines and, hopefully, lands on three legs.
“Landing on Mars is one of the hardest single jobs that people have to do in planetary exploration,” noted InSight’s lead scientist, Bruce Banerdt. “It’s such a difficult thing, it’s such a dangerous thing that there’s always a fairly uncomfortably large chance that something could go wrong.”
Earth’s success rate at Mars is 40 percent, including every attempted flyby, orbital flight and landing by the U.S., Russia and other countries dating all the way back to 1960.
But the U.S. has pulled off seven successful Mars landings over the previous four decades. With only one failed touchdown, it’s an enviable record. No other country has managed to set and operate a spacecraft on the dusty red surface.
InSight could hand NASA its eighth win.
It’s shooting for Elysium Planitia, a plain near the Martian equator that the InSight team hopes is as flat as a parking lot in Kansas with few, if any, rocks. This is no rock-collecting expedition. Instead, the stationary 800-pound lander will use its 6-foot robotic arm to place a mechanical mole and seismometer on the ground.
