HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Eight years of work and waiting came down to several minutes of anxious anticipation as the mission control group running the InSight Mars project held its breath as the rover successfully landed on the Martian surface just before 2 p.m. central time.

A great crowd turned out at the Cosmosphere to witness what is just the fourth successful landing on Mars in 11 attempts.

The crowd watched as mission control called out the last second of InSight’s descent:

 

 

Michael Stabb, who is a Cosmosphere alum and a mission control specialist for NASA, gave the audience details of the mission and described what was happening during the landing. While other rovers on Mars have looked over the surface, Stabb says this mission will be very different:

 

InSight will spend two years investigating the building blocks below the planet’s surface that recorded its history.

To reach Mars, InSight cruised 301,223,981 miles at a top speed of 6,200 mph while being followed by two cube satellites. The suitcase-sized spacecraft, called MarCO, are the first cube satellites to fly into deep space. MarCO will try to share data about InSight when it enters the Martian atmosphere for the landing.