NASA Mars lander set for mission on red planet
NASA's InSight Mars lander touched down successfully Monday afternoon. See our latest coverage here. A story from earlier Monday appears below. After a six-month voyage from Earth, NASA's InSight Mars lander reached the thin Martian atmosphere Monday afternoon to begin a nail-biting six-and-a-half-minute descent to the surface. After streaking through space at some 12,300 mph, it appeared to make a successful landing, kicking off a billion-dollar mission to probe the red planet's hidden interior. "The goal of InSight is nothing less than to better understand the birth of the Earth, the birth of the planet we live on, and we're going to do that by going to Mars," said Principle Investigator Bruce Banerdt. On Earth, plate tectonics and the constantly churning mantle have altered the planet's deep interior, obscuring its history and evolution. But Mars is a smaller planet and much less active than Earth, retaining the "fingerprints" of thos