NASA does it again by landing safely on Mars—something no one else has done

LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE, Calif.—Since humans began trying in 1962, only seven lander and rover missions have ever touched down safely on the surface of Mars, phoned home, and prepared to carry out their scientific missions. On Monday, an eighth mission joined their ranks—NASA's InSight lander. During its descent, the spacecraft experienced up to eight Gs of force. Its heat shield burned away in the thin Martian atmosphere before its parachute deployed to slow it further. Throughout the spacecraft's descent, two little CubeSats followed its trajectory from orbit and transmitted data for most of the journey. This is the first time CubeSats have gone interplanetary, and they played a critical role in providing real-time data as InSight slowed 20,000 km/hour from the top of the Martian atmosphere down to the surface. Inside the control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with space agency administrator Jim Bridenstine looking on, red-shirted engineers broke into cheers as InSight touched down. They clapped their hands, hugged one another, and exuded a mixture of excitement and relief. "It was intense," Bridenstine said, shortly after the landing, on NASA Television. "It's very different being here than watching on TV. What's amazing is that, as soon as it was over, my cell phone rang, and it was the vice president." Mike Pence had watched and wanted to send along his congratulations. Within moments after touching down, InSight took a picture of the red planet's surface, with its hazy atmosphere in the background. As the camera's dust cover had not yet been removed, dust particles covered the image. But no matter: InSight had reached the surface of Mars and reported that all was well. The Soviet Union and Russia have tried multiple times to reach the surface of Mars, and the European Space Agency has tried twice, all to no avail. While NASA has had a handful of failures as well, it can now boast success with InSight as well as the Viking 1 & 2 landers, Mars Pathfinder; Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit & Opportunity, the Phoenix lander, and Curiosity rover.