Paper Boys

Episode 15

How hard was the Insight landing on Mars?

The "6 minutes of terror" came from years of work.

It seems everyone and their mother watched the InSight lander touching down on Mars this past monday, and it was impossible to turn on the TV without hearing that the landing phase is a big challenge. But while the news did a good job telling us that it’s a daunting problem, they didn’t impress just how hard it was to actually solve. Charlie brings in a conference paper by the NASA engineers who made the Mars magic happen.

Grad Student Highlight: EL Meszaros (@iastranger) from Brown University shares her research!

Check out the NASA conference paper here and the Washington Post article here.

Want to landing InSight yourself? Check out the game here.

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