Those first signals were relayed to Earth by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and were received on Earth at 5:30 pm PST yesterday. Odyssey later sent a pair of images to Earth from InSight that showed its landing site. Currently, the batteries Insight uses for operations are charging. Surface operations are scheduled to begin today along with the instrument deployment phase of the mission.
InSight gathers energy from the sun via twin 7-foot wide solar arrays. NASA says that when these arrays are open, the lander is about the size of a large convertible car from the 1960s. Those solar panels can provide 600 to 700 watts of power on a clear day, roughly enough juice to power a household blender. The giant solar panels are expected to produce 200 to 300 watts of power even when covered in dust.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
