介绍： The Latest Martian Landing
5 days ago,after 7 months of 301,000 miles journey,NASA successfully landed their latest Lander for Mars,opening a new era of Mars explore.
The lander,which is called InSight,is a 1 meter high,6 meters wide spacecraft launched in May 5 by Atlas V 401 rocket in Vandenburg Air Force B...

介绍： The Latest Martian Landing
5 days ago,after 7 months of 301,000 miles journey,NASA successfully landed their latest Lander for Mars,opening a new era of Mars explore.
The lander,which is called InSight,is a 1 meter high,6 meters wide spacecraft launched in May 5 by Atlas V 401 rocket in Vandenburg Air Force Base.With 12 rocket boosters and 3 landing legs on its bottom,it was designed to land itself on Mars.
During the flight,it was wrapped in a back shell with a heat shield on its bottom,so that it could survive in the interplanetary cruise.When it aproached to the Mars,the heat shield played a saginificent role as it flied into the Martian atmospher,because the temparature at the external surface of the heat shield will reach about 1,500 ℃.There is also a parachute built on the top of the back shell,in order to slow the spacecraft down from 1000mph to 134mph.After passive deceleration,the lander seperated from the back shell,deployed its 3 landing legs and ignited 12 rocket boosters to slow itself down to 5.4mph then touched down on the Martian surface.
The landing procedure may sounds not very complicated,but easy to say,hard to.do.In fact,only about 40% of the missions ever sent to Mars by any space agency have been successful.The planet's thin atmospher makes landing a challenge,and its extreme temperature swings make it difficult to operate on the surface.But if a spacecraft survives the trip,there is a bounty of science to be collected,and thank god they did it!
ANCHOR 胡玉成