Seven minutes of terror concluded beautifully today as NASA's InSight lander touched down flawlessly on the flat, smooth plains of Elysium Planitia on Mars.



The telemetry came back exactly as planned, and the first dusty image from the surface confirmed that the solar panels deployed correctly. Now the slow, meticulous process begins: using the robotic arm to carefully place the seismometer and the heat probe onto the Martian soil. It is always a nerve-wracking experience watching a planetary landing, but the engineering teams have pulled it off spectacularly once again. Time to see what the interior of Mars can tell us!