On Monday shortly before noon US west coast time (2000 UTC), NASA's InSight lander successfully touched down on Elysium Planitia on Mars. It sent a signal beep and image of the surface of Mars to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
The lander used aerobraking with a heat shield, then a parachute and finally rockets to achieve a soft landing on the surface. It used similar entry, descent, and landing sequence to the Phoenix spacecraft.
Insight project manager Tom Hoffman said, "We hit the Martian atmosphere at 12,300 mph [miles per hour; 19,800 kilometres per hour], and the whole sequence to touching down on the surface took only [six and a half] minutes [...] During that short span of time, InSight had to autonomously perform dozens of operations and do them flawlessly — and by all indications, that is exactly what our spacecraft did."