Mars Orbiter Spots NASA’s InSight Lander From Space

Many of us have been fascinated by the journey of NASA’s InSight lander. It landed on Mars a couple of weeks ago after spending around six months traveling through space. The robot’s precise location within the Elysium Planitia is now known as it has been spotted by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter from space.

NASA’s InSight Lander arrived on Mars back on November 26th. NASA scientists believed that it had landed along the spot which was designated as an ideal 81 mile long landing zone for the robot. However, its location within the Elysium Planitia wasn’t known previously. The Elysium Planitia is a flat lava plain that’s north of the Martian equator.

The information about its precise location within the plain comes from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It has been up there for quite some time, the satellite has been orbiting around Mars since 2006. It scanned the Martian surface near the landing site twice this month and images taken by its high resolution camera has spotted InSight from space.

NASA notes that the reason why some of the objects in the image appear to have a teal hue is that lighting being reflected off of their surfaces causes the color to be saturated. The InSight lander also beamed down a selfie from Mars recently to show that it has safely arrived and is working well.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: mars, NASA, Social Hit