Still Seeing Red

The Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC), located on the robotic arm of NASA's InSight lander, took this picture of the Martian surface on Nov. 26, 2018, the same day the spacecraft touched down on the Red Planet. The camera's transparent dust cover is still on in this image, to prevent particulates kicked up during landing from settling on the camera's lens. This image was relayed from InSight to Earth via NASA's Odyssey spacecraft, currently orbiting Mars. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

MORE ON MARS: We're still over the moon about the successful Mars landing yesterday!

Below, CJ and Annabelle share their thoughts about the landing.  Annabelle is up first. ...

NASA's InSight mission just recently landed on the fourth planet form our sun; Mars. Its mission is to place multiple probes and "moles" on the surface of the red planet, to provide information about the insides of Mars and how it could have possibly formed. These probes include seismometers that may be able to find out exactly what Mars' core is made of, along with its other layers. 

The InSight lander was also accompanied by two CubeSats (short for cube satellites) that flew by Mars as the lander was touching down to make the signal transport back to Earth much quicker. These Satellites, dubbed MarCO (Mars Cube One). These were sadly only a fly-by, but they may change the way we communicate with probes and rovers in the future. 

While InSight was about to land on Mars, my family went to the Museum of Flight to watch the landing. It was extremely tense to watch, as the narrators explained that almost everything had to be perfect otherwise it wouldn't land properly. The landing went off without a hitch, and InSight began its mission by first taking a picture of the surface, covered in dust. The InSight lander will release its probes for a number of months, taking things slowly to make sure all goes well.

And here's what CJ had to say about it. ...

On 26 November 2018, the Museum of Flight (in Seattle, Washington,) the largest known private aerospace museum on the planet, hosted an event in its Charles Simonyi Space Gallery. The event was an in-person viewing of the livestream of the landing of the InSight lander, which successfully landed on Mars during the livestream. Our local event featured commentary from Geoff Nunn, the adjunct Space Curator at the Museum of Flight, as well as a NASA Solar System Ambassador. According to the event's page on the Museum of Flight's website, the event lasted from 11 A.M to 12:30 P.M, though we left shortly after 12 P.M.

The primary goal of the InSight lander is to learn more about the composition of Mars' deep interior, which is, for all intents and purposes, uncharted territory. During the livestream, we were shown a map of where various missions to Mars in the past had landed. InSight landed closest to the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars' surface on 6 August 2012. InSight landed in Elysium Planitia, an area on Mars' surface. I got to ask Nunn if there was a reason in particular why InSight landed close to Curiosity, and he told me that NASA chose the most boring place possible (Elysium Planitia is a giant plain,) presumably to make drilling into the surface easier for InSight.

At the event, the crowd consisted of multiple people of varying ages, though I only noticed one child in the crowd (according to my mother, there were a few others.) If we had chosen to watch the livestream at home (which we very well could have done, especially if our schedule was different,) it probably wouldn't have been nearly as engaging as watching it in a crowd of other space geeks. The crowd reacted with cheers and applause when it was revealed that InSight's landing was successful, and reacted in a similar fashion once the first picture taken by InSight was revealed. Overall, the crowd seemed very engaged in the event, eager to learn the newest info about the mission.

One thing that makes me really happy is that many people got to watch the historic event, because we made it a point to spread the word.

For instance, I let both Rick and Kennedy know about it, and gave them mission info to share with their students. Rick's class had a conflict and couldn't watch live, but Kennedy's fourth graders watched - as did his whole school, apparently! How cool is that? Kennedy reports the kids were very into it, and "it helps that our current science unit is 'Earth movements,' so the mission of InSight aligns quite nicely with what we've been studying."

I also posted info about the launch time and ways to view to a Seattle Homeschoolers' Facebook page. The post received dozens of likes, and numerous people on the page thanked me, saying they wouldn't have known about it and watched it if not for my post. One family even went to The Museum of Flight for the landing party. 

Just tonight, another parent posted, "I'm really glad you shared this. My son had so much fun and learned A LOT from watching this and reading the cartoon. He was telling his grandma all about it in detail, so I know he had some serious retention on it."

Very gratifying, to say the least! We love spreading NASA news. :)