InSight landed on Mars!

On 26 November 2018 the time had come: InSight successfully landed on the Elysium plain. This was not an easy task. It was only possible thanks to technologies that had been tried and tested in earlier missions and played together perfectly. The InSight mission had to overcome additional difficulties: Compared to other Mars missions, it entered the atmosphere with a slower velocity, was heavier, landed at a higher point and at a meteorologically less favourable time due to a high risk of sandstorms. Beginning from the entry into the atmosphere, the entire landing took six minutes. By this time, the mission had already covered a distance of approximately 483 million kilometres and spent 205 days in space.

The successful landing is an important milestone in fulfilling the scientific objectives of the mission. We are particularly interested in the origin and development of Mars and its inner structure. We can therefore hardly wait until the seismometer is set down on the surface of Mars and the first measurement data arrives, which we will then immediately evaluate together with researchers from the Institute of Geophysics. InSight is thus also the start of a new era: For the first time, scientific data on the before-mentioned topics will be collected and the first results will be awaited with anticipation. First marsquake measurements are expected for early January if everything goes according to plan.

Have you missed it? Watch the landing here.