On the way to Mars, it was followed by two nano-satellites (cubest) called MarCO. This is the first time that CubeSat technology is being tried on Mars, and they were also supposed to film the InSight landing from space
After seven months of space travel, NASA's MARS INSIGHT spacecraft landed safely on Mars at around 22:00 PM Israel time (26/11/2018). A few minutes later, INSIGHT sent the official "beep" to NASA "A to signify that it is alive and well and broadcast a photograph of the surface of Mars in the landing area. In the initial decoding of the image, according to the control center personnel in the NASA television broadcast, one sees that the area is free of rocks and the black dots scattered on the ground are sand deposits. This is a stationary lander, not an all-terrain vehicle (ROVER).
InSight did not report any malfunctions that might have occurred during the landing (as has happened in the past with quite a few spacecraft). The time difference with Mars in its current position is eight minutes so that the members of the control team could not intervene.
Later, it will collect data and transmit it to spacecraft orbiting Mars and through them to Earth. INSIGHT (English acronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) launched on March 5 this year, is going to investigate using a large number of scientific instruments. In the next two years at least, it will explore the subsoil and record the geological history of the landing area.
InSight's scientific payload consists of two instruments: the Seismic Experiment of the Interior Structure (SEIS), built by the French Space Agency, with the participation of the Institute of Global Psychology (IPGP), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Solar System, Imperial College and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory . The second instrument, the Heat Flow and Physical Properties (HP3), is provided by the German Space Agency. Also, the Rotational Orientation and Internal Monitoring Experiment (RISE), led by JPL, will use the spacecraft's communications system to provide precise measurements of the planets' rotation.
On the way to Mars, it was followed by two nano-satellites (cubest) called MarCO. This is the first time that CubeSat technology is being tried on Mars, and they were also supposed to photograph the InSight landing from space.
