Yesterday at 22:15
Photo NASA
On December 19, NASA’s InSight lander placed its seismometer on the surface of the red planet.
“New images from the lander show the seismometer on the ground, its copper-colored covering faintly illuminated in the Martian dusk. It looks as if all is calm and all is bright for InSight, heading into the end of the year,” the NASA press center reported.
“InSight’s timetable of activities on Mars has gone better than we hoped,” said InSight Project Manager Tom Hoffman, who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The commands to the spacecraft were sent up on December 18, and on December 19 the seismometer was “gently placed onto the ground directly in front of the lander,” NASA wrote.
The seismometer will allow scientists to look inside Mars and to study the movement of the ground. However, according to NASA specialists, about a year is needed to collect enough data and make any analysis.
