Cape Canaveral: For the eighth time ever, humanity has achieved one of the toughest tasks in the solar system: landing a spacecraft on Mars.

NASA flight controllers announced that the spacecraft InSight touched down shortly before 7am on Tuesday AEDT, after a perilous supersonic descent through the red Martian skies, to explore the planet's interior.

It's the first spacecraft built to explore the deep interior of another world, carrying instruments to detect planetary heat and seismic rumblings never measured anywhere but earth.

The NASA InSight spacecraft touched down on its new home Elysium Planitia on Mars and scientists could not contain their excitement. Vision: twitter.com/NASA

Mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, erupted in laughter, applause, hugs and tears as soon as the lander touched down.

"That was awesome," one woman said, wiping her eyes and clasping her colleague's hand. A few minutes later, a splotchy red and brown image appeared on the control room's main screen - InSight's first photograph from its new home.

An image transmitted from Mars by the InSight lander is seen on a computer screen at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA

"Flawless," declared JPL's chief engineer, Rob Manning.

"This is what we really hoped and imagined in our mind's eye," he said. "Sometimes things work out in your favour."

A pair of mini satellites trailing InSight since their May liftoff provided practically real-time updates of the spacecraft's supersonic descent through the reddish skies. The satellite also shot back a quick photo from Mars' surface.

The image was marred by specks of debris on the camera cover. But the quick look at the vista showed a flat surface with few if any rocks - just what scientists were hoping for. Much better pictures will arrive in the hours and days ahead.

This illustration shows the InSight lander drilling into the surface of Mars. NASA

"This thing has a lot more to do," said entry, descent and landing systems engineer Rob Grover. "But just getting to the surface of Mars is no mean feat."

Mars InSight team members Kris Bruvold and Sandy Krasner rejoice inside the Mission Support Area at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California after receiving confirmation that the Mars InSight lander had successfully touched down. AP

The interminable stretch from the moment a spacecraft hits the Martian atmosphere to the second it touches down on the Red Planet's rusty surface is what scientists call "the seven minutes of terror."

Landing a spacecraft on Mars is as difficult as it sounds. More than half of all missions don't make it safely to the surface. Because it takes more than seven minutes for light signals to travel 100 million miles to Earth, scientists have no control over the process. All they can do is program the spacecraft with their best technology and wait.

Earlier, project manager Tim Hoffin said the success of the landing won't be fully clear for a number of hours.

"We'll definitely have a celebration when we get successfully landed but we're going to have to temper that just a little bit while we wait about five-and-a-half hours to know absolutely for sure we're in good shape," he said.

InSight will spend 24 months - about one Martian year - using seismic monitoring and underground temperature readings to unlock mysteries about how Mars was formed and, by extension, the origins of the earth and other rocky planets of the inner solar system.

While earth's tectonics and other forces have erased most evidence of its early history, much of Mars - about one-third the size of earth - is believed to have remained largely static, creating a geologic time machine for scientists.

It's NASA's first Mars landing in six years.

More to come

AAP, Washington Post