Nasa’s InSight spacecraft takes first ‘selfie’ after flawless landing on Mars
- InSight is the first spacecraft designed to explore the deep interior of another world
- There was jubilation among scientists who had waited in suspense for confirmation to arrive across 548 million km of space
Nasa’s InSight spacecraft, the first robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of a distant world, touched down safely on the surface of Mars with instruments to detect planetary seismic rumblings never measured anywhere but Earth.
Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles burst into cheers, applause and hugs as they received signals confirming InSight’s arrival on Martian soil – a vast, barren plain near the planet’s equator – soon before 3pm EST on Monday.
Minutes later, JPL controllers received a fuzzy “selfie” photograph of the probe’s new surroundings on the Red Planet, showing the edge of one lander leg beside a rock.
But as expected, the dust kicked up during the landing obscured the first picture InSight sent back, which was heavily flecked. Better photos are expected in the days ahead, after the dust covers come off.
Watch parties for Nasa’s live television coverage of the event were held at museums, libraries and other public venues around the world, including Times Square, where a small crowd of 40 or 50 people braved pouring rain to witness the broadcast on a giant television screen affixed to a wall of the Nasdaq building.