WATCH LIVE AS NASA'S INSIGHT LANDER DESCENDS TO MARS

今日の英語の習慣化の題材です。

NASAがMarsへのRobotの着陸の様子をWebsiteで"inSight lander"を公開する予定です。

TODAY NASA WILL attempt its eighth successful landing of a robot on the red planet by venturing to place its InSight lander—a spacecraft almost 10 years and nearly one billion dollars in the making—as gently as possible on the vast planes of Mars' Elysium Planitia.

But a soft touchdown is far from guaranteed. The 1500-pound robot will enter the planet's atmosphere around 12:00 PST in excess of 12,000 miles per hour, its protective aeroshell shielding it from heat-generating friction and treacherous sandstorms on its descent toward the Martian surface. Yet the planet's thin atmosphere can only slow the spacecraft so much; InSight will also deploy a 39-foot-wide supersonic parachute and activate its descent thrusters to decelerate to just five miles per hour before finally plopping down on its shock-absorbing legs.