Six Months After Launch, NASA's New InSight Mars Rover Will Land On Red Planet On Nov 27
It was back in 2012 that we were able to tune in to watch the Curiosity Rover land on Mars, to begin its next couple of years collecting and analysing samples. Now, six years later, we¡¯re going to get that chance again with NASA¡¯s latest Mars rover.
It was back in 2012 that we were able to tune in to watch the Curiosity Rover land on Mars, to begin its next couple of years collecting and analysing samples.
Now, six years later, we're going to get that chance again with NASA's latest Mars rover.
The InSight Mars Lander, as NASA has just announced, will touch down on the Red Planet on November 26 at 3 pm EST, or November 27 at 1:30 am here in India. And space enthusiasts all over the world will be able to catch the monumental event live on the space agency's website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.
For those of you that need a refresher, InSight was launched on May 5 earlier this year, and will be NASA's first spacecraft to land on Mars since 2012. Short for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, it'll focus on studying the interior of the planet, complete with seismometer, thermometer, and radio echo sensors.
There are of course more landers planned for Mars, the nearest being the ExoMars rover. However, that spacecraft is expected to touch down on Mars only in 2020. It'll have the most exciting job so far though, that of searching for signs of alien life, but we're going to have to sit on our hands and wait for it a bit.
In the meantime, maybe you can instead watch InSight reach the surface of the planet, and deploy amidst the settling dust, to take on its mission for the first time.
