PASADENA—NASA’s Mars science lander InSight touched down safely on the surface of the red planet on Monday to begin its two-year mission as the first spacecraft designed to explore the deep interior of another world.
Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles burst into cheers and applause as they received signals confirming InSight’s arrival on Martian soil—a vast, barren plain near the planet’s equator—shortly before 3 p.m.
