NASA engineers on stress, rituals before landing

(20 Nov 2018) Mars is about to get the first U.S. visitor surface in years: a three-legged, one-armed geologist designed to dig deep and stake out quakes.
NASA's InSight makes its grand entrance through the rose-tinted Martian skies on Monday, after a six-month, 300 million-mile (480 million-kilometer) journey. It will be the first American emissary since the Curiosity rover in 2012, and the first robot dedicated to exploring underground.
NASA is going vintage to land this mechanical miner of the surface of the red planet. Engine firings will slow its final descent, and the spacecraft will plop down on rigid tripod legs, mimicking the landings of earlier successful missions.
That's where old school ends on this $1 billion U.S.-European effort to examine the insides of Mars.
Once flight controllers in California determine the coast is clear at the landing site _ fairly flat and rock free _ InSight's 6-foot (1.8-meter) arm will remove the two main science experiments from the deck of the lander and place them directly on the Martian surface.
No spacecraft has attempted anything like that before.

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