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		</div><p>A spacecraft hurtling towards Mars will be the first to study the deep interior of the planet if it survives the landing.</p>
<p>The InSight probe is scheduled to arrive on Martian soil at around 8pm Irish Time today, scientists said.<br />
To land smoothly it must slow down from 12,300mph to 5 mph, the equivalent of human jogging speed, in just seven minutes after hitting Mars’s atmosphere, Nasa said.</p>
<p>Only around four in 10 missions ever sent to the Red Planet have been successful – and they have all been US spacecraft. The European spacecraft Schiaparelli smashed into the planet in 2016 after switching off its retro-rockets too early, scientists believe.</p>
<p>It was testing the landing system for a British-built rover to be launched on the second phase of the ExoMars mission in 2020.</p>
<p>The extremely thin atmosphere of Mars means there is hardly any friction to slow down spacecraft, meaning InSight will deploy small rockets, parachutes, heat shields and shock-absorbing legs to manage the deceleration.</p>
<p><a href="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/97996AD5-D9BD-48FC-93B7-7EE0FFCE1740.jpeg"><img src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/97996AD5-D9BD-48FC-93B7-7EE0FFCE1740.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="337" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-121247" /></a></p>
<p>If successful, the three-legged probe will send information back, allowing scientists to learn about how rocky worlds like the Earth and Moon formed more than 4.5 billion years ago.</p>
<p>Lori Glaze, acting director of the Planetary Science Division at Nasa, said: “Once InSight is settled on the Red Planet and its instruments are deployed, it will start collecting valuable information about the structure of Mars’ deep interior — information that will help us understand the formation and evolution of all rocky planets, including the one we call home.”</p>
<p>InSight, set to be the first probe to explore below the surface of Mars, was launched from California on May 5. It comes after a huge 12-mile wide lake of water was discovered beneath the southern ice cap of the Red Planet earlier this year.</p>
<p>The discovery, which has major implications for the chances of life surviving on Mars, was made by an orbiting European probe using ground-penetrating radar. It is the first time a large stable body of liquid water has been confirmed to exist on Mars.</p>
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