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Nasa is landing on the Martian surface, hoping to drill down into the mysteries of the red planet and the rest of our solar system.

The InSight lander is about to arrive and will immediately get to work trying to understand the secrets that lie beneath Mars, for the first time ever.

But before it starts it must navigate the potentially deadly journey through the Martian atmosphere to get to that surface. Described by engineers as "seven minutes of terror", that is a journey that more landers have failed to make than have succeeded.

It comes at the end of a seven-month trip from Earth. And it has been many years in the planning, marking a new interest in journeying to our closest planet and the first time Nasa has arrived on Mars in six years.

The lander has separated from its heat shield, dropping away as it begins the closest bit of its descent.
  • Andrew Griffin
The radar has locked on the ground! InSight now knows where it's pointing.
  • Andrew Griffin
(Everything is looking exactly as engineers would have hoped so far. And probably much better than they expected.)
  • Andrew Griffin
Now InSight's radar will scan for the floor, trying to work out how high up it is to ensure that it can land softly and accurately.
  • Andrew Griffin
The parachute is deployed!!
  • Andrew Griffin
InSight has hit peak heating, and peak deceleration, as it barrels through the atmosphere. The next big step is the parachutes being deployed, to slow it down from the 1000 metres per second to the much slower speed it needs to touch down softly.
  • Andrew Griffin
(If all is well, InSight just landed on Mars, in Mars time. We'll know if that's the case in 10 minutes or so, hopefully.)
  • Andrew Griffin
If you were on Mars (like Elon Musk says he will soon be) you'd see a big, bright hot comet streaking across the sky, as the lander hits the atmosphere and sends a cloud around it.
  • Andrew Griffin
InSight has entered the atmosphere!!!!!!
 
It's going to start getting very hot as the atmosphere slows it down and the friction gets the heat shield protecting the lander as hot as 1500C. It's protected by that big shield, which will keep the lander itself just a little hotter than room temperature.
  • Andrew Griffin
Again we don't need that information – Nasa isn't driving the lander, and doesn't need live information – but it ensures we have the most up to date information if anything goes wrong. And we might even get a picture as it drops down.
  • Andrew Griffin
Both MarCOs – the two little observant cubes that watch the landing and send updates back down to Earth – are doing great. Everything's as it should be and we'll receive live updates as the lander makes its way down.
  • Andrew Griffin
The next thing we're waiting for is: entry. When the lander hits the atmosphere, and everything starts getting hotter and more difficult. The atmosphere is a challenge – we don't want the lander to burn up with the friction – but it's also the thing that will allow InSight to float (hopefully) softly down to the surface.
  • Andrew Griffin
Engineers have lost signal from InSight. But that's all good! It's just because it's switched to its own signal. Everything is going well so far! All the spacecraft are pointing in the right direction, organised as they should be, and communicating right as they should.
  • Andrew Griffin
The Marcos are doing a great job – they're both in the right line-up to send messages back to Earth as they go. That's great news, if only for the engineers whose nerves will be calmed by getting live information as the lander heads towards the surface.
  • Andrew Griffin
And now that's happening down here on Earth. Nasa engineers are eagerly awaiting confirmation that everything has separated and the lander is headed for land.
  • Andrew Griffin
Right about now, on Mars, InSight is initiating its entry, descent and landing (or EDL) sequence. All that way away, the cruise stage is separating from the InSight capsule itself. But we won't know if that's happened for another eight minutes or so, as the messages make their way to us.
  • Andrew Griffin
Here's the scene inside Nasa's JPL, as engineers anxiously await updates.
 
 
  • Andrew Griffin
"They're both healthy, and they're both doing great," says one engineer of the pair of briefcase-sized satellites. (Nasa is stubbornly referring to them as "– their official name – rather than the infinitely cuter Wall-E inspired monikers.)
  • Andrew Griffin
Everything's looking good so far, say engineers – they're in touch with both InSight itself and the CubeSats.
  • Andrew Griffin
Here's Nasa's big map of events where people can watch along at home. They're even in Madagascar!
 
 
And people in Times Square will even get to see it on the huge Nasdaq tower.
 
 
  • Andrew Griffin

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