Pictorial postmark commemorates Mars landing

By Denise McCarty

InSight, NASA’s Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport mission, successfully landed on Mars Monday, Nov. 26, and a pictorial postmark was prepared to commemorate the event.

According to NASA’s website, the landing occurred at approximately 2:52 p.m. ET: “The lander plunged through the thin Martian atmosphere, heatshield first, and used a parachute to slow down. It fired its retro rockets to slowly descend to the surface of Mars, and land on the smooth plains of Elysium Planitia.”

The Nov. 26 Mission on Mars Station postmark is from Pasadena, Calif., home to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

The Mars InSight lander was launched May 5 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

In a media release, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said of the mission: “InSight’s team hopes that by studying the deep interior of Mars, we can learn how other rocky worlds, including Earth and the Moon, formed. Our home planet and Mars were molded from the same primordial stuff more than 4.5 billion years ago, but then became quite different.”

To obtain the postmark, address your request to:

MISSION ON MARS Station, Postmaster, 600 Lincoln Ave., Pasadena, CA 91109-9998, Nov. 26.

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