Mars Lander’s First Day On The Job
While you’ve been commuting to work this morning, a unique space probe has hopefully landed on Mars.
With a successful touchdown, NASA’s InSight lander would be the first probe to reach the red planet in six years, after a journey of more than 480 million kilometres.
The unmanned spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin, was scheduled to land on the Martian surface at 7am, east coast Australia time, and will hopefully dig deeper into the planet than any previous probe.
The lander’s name, InSight, stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport – but you probably guessed that, didn’t you?
Scientists were hoping that the landing will be just the beginning of a two-year mission, during which InSight will hopefully venture into Mars’ deep interior.