Thanks for the DSN Now clarification, Doug.


Yeah, that's...pretty rough in the distance. Could've gotten ugly. Looks like they found a nice sandy patch, though, if the rest of the terrain is like the near part.

Anyone notice the indentations on the robotic arm cover plate, wonder if they were there before flight ?

PHIL-O-VISION of the horizon; 10X vertical
~2 degrees tilt to the right - straighten out
This place is flat...
Click to view attachment


EDIT:
better PHIL-O-VISION (rotate left 2 degrees before vertical exaggeration)
Click to view attachment

NASA JPL
‏Verified account @NASAJPL
2m2 minutes ago

Data from Odyssey indicate @NASAInSight’s solar arrays are open and batteries are charging. The transmission also included this view from the instrument deployment camera, showing the seismometer (left), grapple (center) and robotic arm (right) -----

Solar panels are deployed and batteries are charging.

https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1067253443339776000

Edit: jinxed by Phil

Forum note: All RIGHT!!!!! We have now all exhaled, so it's time to segue into the surface operations phase. Please start migrating the discussion to this new thread; the EDL thread will close sometime in the near future.

What a great day it's been.

Yup, sure did, and it's discussed at length in both the press kit and Emily's what-to-expect article.

Bruce Banerdt told me today the following:
- very close to center of the ellipse
- lander tilt about 1.7 degrees to N-eastish, basically level
- almost perfect clocking to desired E-W

Couldn't ask for anything more.

Question that they may or not may not know the answer to: The latest image shows some rough terrain fairly close at hand, though hard to judge distance; were they confident enough in the targeting accuracy that they were sure that they'd miss that area?

That's probably only a few tens of meters away - if that. The landing ellipse was 10's of km across.

In short - the spacecraft was basically just as likely to land where it did, as on top of that large rock in the middle distance.

Was wondering precisely that. Glad to see that the luck of the Vikings was with InSight....

The larger rocks seem few and far between so there would be a finite but very low probability of landing on one. Would not smaller
rocks, potentially able to tilt the lander if a leg pad encountered one be moved by the lander exhaust? The landing image does seem to show a scoured field close in.

There is always a % risk of a bad landing.
I wonder what the worst case scenario was for instrument deploy ? 45 degrees/ 60 degrees ?

Just got back for a great dinner with family after EDL. This landing was great and the flight data almost looks like our sim data from the many EDL sims we did. Also a great match to Phoenix performance, so I hope we can do more of these than once every 10 years. Still very excited from my 2nd landing on Mars (now 2 for 3)! Was on InSight from the proposal phase, so 7 years of hard work came to fruition in in 7 minutes. Arrays deployed and we have positive power so short term we are very safe (never guess longer than short term).

The Marcos were great (if any Marco team members watch this forum thanks so much for the data)! We got Marco UHF carrier lock before we even separated from the cruise stage and telemetry well before entry interface. Never dropped data during EDL (even at backshell sep which expected). No ideas but I bet this technology will be on future lander programs. On PHX I focused on the prop system telemetry only (pressures and thruster on times). This time I watched the system performance (GNC rates, altitude and velocity), and I am glad that I did. I does look from the data we did a BAM to avoid the backshell (we had low horizontal rates), but need to review in more detail to be sure. Prop system worked great and thanks to all the suppliers who built the pieces for us. No way to compare the rush this event gave me (I have done lots of things in deep space including orbit insertions at Jupiter and Saturn) but nothing compares to seeing data like this during EDL! Much better than MPL (RIP, but without that failure we may not have had two successive successes). I am not involved in landed ops (no need for prop in that phase) but still hope all science goes great and just like PHX and Juno provides data that invalidates many previous theories (that is in my opinion the best reason to do these missions)! Getting tired so it is good night for me.

Great job, propguy; sure made it look easy to us amateurs!!! Get some rest & crack a cold one or six; you damn well earned it.

Thanks for all the InSight <rimshot!> you contributed here; it was fascinating and very, VERY much appreciated!

I just want to say congratulations to all the InSight team.
Yesterday Mars and InSight were trending since 18:00 UTC in social networks in Spain until late at night. And that is great.

A photo taken by the camera on the instrument arm has now appeared on the insight raw images page. The cover is still on this camera. However due to the lack of dust up there, the image is clear.

https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/13?site=insight

The rocks in this image look larger than those on the press conference image.

A rather neat public art reaction to the successful EDL. This is The Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles, at the intersection of 5th & Spring Streets. You will notice a small "space invader" tile model at about the 10 o'clock position from the large red lit balloon.

The invader appeared back in May. The balloon appeared several days ago but remained dark. The balloon was lit today.

Click to view attachment

Sorry to briefly reopen a closed thread, but NASA just released a rather cool bit of EPO regarding a side effect of InSight's EDL. Check out the video, turn it up, and enjoy!

I will take advantage of the opened thread to add this: the cruise stage which brought InSight to Mars was separated before entry. It would have entered the atmosphere and some fragments probably hit the ground. The Curiosity cruise stage impact site was imaged by HiRISE, so InSight's probably could be as well. It would probably show up first in CTX images. Here's hoping!

Phil