Debuting the West Coast’s first interplanetary launch on May 5, NASA’s InSight lander embarked on a 54.6-million kilometer (about 33.9 million mile) trip to the Red Planet. Tasked with the unique mission of exploring the interior of Mars — during which it’ll deal with everything from Mars-quakes to internal heat flow — the lander needs to successfully complete a six-minute, white knuckle-inducing process before it can get to work: landing on Mars.
Distilled into eight main drawings, chief engineer Rob Manning from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains in a video just how rigorous the landing requirements are.
Read More… NASA Video Explains How InSight Landing Is Insanely Difficult