NASA's Martian quake sensor InSight lands at slight angle

NASA's unmanned Martian quake sensor, InSight, has landed at a slight angle on the Red Planet, and experts are hopeful the spacecraft will work as planned, the US space agency said Friday.

The USD 993 million lander arrived Monday at its target, a lava plain named Elysium Planitia, for a two-year mission aimed at better understanding how Earth's neighboring planet formed.

"The vehicle sits slightly tilted (about 4 degrees) in a shallow dust- and sand-filled impact crater known as a 'hollow,'" NASA said in a statement.

InSight was engineered to operate on a surface with an inclination up to 15 degrees.

Therefore, experts are hopeful that its two main instruments -- a quake sensor and self-hammering mole to measure heat below the surface -- will work as planned.

"We couldn't be happier," said InSight project manager Tom Hoffman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"There are no landing pads or runways on Mars, so coming down in an area that is basically a large sandbox without any large rocks should make instrument deployment easier and provide a great place for our mole to start burrowing."