NASA's Insight Lander on Mars Spotted from Space!
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | December 13, 2018 02:42pm ET
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NASA's newly arrived Mars lander has been spotted by one its orbiting cousins.
The space agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used its supersharp High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (HiRISE) to photograph the InSight lander, as well as the hardware that helped the stationary robot ace its Nov. 26 touchdown on the equatorial plain known as Elysium Planitia.
"It looks like the heat shield (upper right) has its dark outside facing down, since it is so bright (saturated, probably a specular reflection)," HiRISE principal investigator Alfred McEwen, of the University of Arizona, wrote in an image description today (Dec. 13). [Mars InSight in Photos: NASA's Mission to Probe Core of the Red Planet]
"The lander (middle) disturbed dust over a fair distance and has darkened the surface, as seen previously at the Phoenix and Curiosity landing sites," McEwen added, referring to the touchdowns of NASA's Phoenix lander and Curiosity rover in May 2008 and August 2012, respectively. "The bright spot associated with the lander is probably another specular reflection, and there are two smaller bluish extensions that are the solar arrays, plus their shadows."
More:
https://www.space.com/42731-insight-mars-lander-space-photos-mro.html
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