Live Footage of NASA’s First Mars Landing in Six Years

The InSight lander’s Mars approach will be reminiscent of Curiosity’s 2012 “seven minutes of terror.”

November 26, 2018

William Kucinski

Artist's rendition of the InSight lander's descent (Image source: NASA)

NASA's Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport ( InSight ) lander is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet at approximately 3 p.m. Eastern time, November 26.

Coverage of the InSight landing

Launched on May 5, InSight marks NASA's first Mars landing since the Curiosity rover in 2012. The landing will kick off a two-year mission in which InSight will become the first spacecraft to study Mars' deep interior. Its data also will help scientists understand the formation of all rocky worlds, including our own.

The event will be reminiscent of the NASA Curiosity rover’s “ seven minutes of terror ” landing.

InSight is being followed to Mars by two mini-spacecraft comprising NASA’s Mars Cube One ( MarCO ), the first deep-space mission for CubeSats. If MarCO makes its planned Mars flyby, it will attempt to relay data from InSight as it enters the planet’s atmosphere and lands.

InSight and MarCO flight controllers will monitor the spacecraft's entry, descent and landing from mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where all landing events will take place.

William Kucinski is content editor at SAE International, Aerospace Products Group in Warrendale, Pa. Previously, he worked as a writer at the NASA Safety Center in Cleveland, Ohio and was responsible for writing the agency’s System Failure Case Studies. His interests include literally anything that has to do with space, past and present military aircraft, and propulsion technology.

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