The entry, descent, and landing (EDL) begins when the spacecraft reaches the Martian atmosphere, about 80 miles (about 128 kilometers) above the surface, and ends with the lander safe and sound on the surface of Mars six minutes later.
For InSight, this phase includes a combination of technologies inherited from past NASA Mars missions such as NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander. This landing system weighs less than the airbags used for the twin rovers or the skycrane used by the Mars Science Laboratory. The lean landing hardware helps InSight place a higher ratio of science instruments to total launch mass on the surface of Mars.
Compared with Phoenix, though, InSight's landing presents four added challenges:
InSight enters the atmosphere at a lower velocity -- 12,300 miles per hour (5.5 kilometers per second) vs. 12,500 miles per hour (5.6 kilometers per second).
InSight has more mass entering the atmosphere -- about 1,340 pounds (608 kilograms) vs. 1,263 pounds (573 kilograms).
InSight lands at an elevation of about 4,900 feet (1.5 kilometers) higher than Phoenix did, so it has less atmosphere to use for deceleration.
InSight lands during northern hemisphere autumn on Mars, when dust storms are known to have grown to global proportions in some prior years.
Some of the changes in InSight's entry, descent and landing system, compared to the one used by Phoenix, are:
InSight uses a thicker heat shield, partly to handle the possibility of being sandblasted by a dust storm.
InSight’s parachute suspension lines use stronger material.
The entry, descent and landing sequence breaks down into three parts:
On Monday shortly before noon US west coast time (2000 ), NASA's  successfully touched down on  on Mars. It sent a signal beep and image of the surface of Mars to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in .
Artist's rendition of the InSight Lander showing the solar panels in their open position after landing, heat flow instrument in the deployed position, and seismometer. 

The lander used  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 .

Insight project manager Tom Hoffman said, "We hit the Martian atmosphere at 12,300  miles per hour; 19,800 , 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."

''InSight'' stands for ''Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport''. The lander's two-year mission is to assess what Mars is like underground, determining the planet's heat flow and listening to the reverberations of groundquakes and meteorite impacts.

Acting director of NASA's Planetary Science Division Lori Glaze said, "We've studied Mars from orbit and from the surface since 1965, learning about its weather, atmosphere, geology and surface chemistry ... Now we finally will explore inside Mars and deepen our understanding of our terrestrial neighbor as NASA prepares to send human explorers deeper into the solar system."

InSight is expected to begin its mission in a few months, once it has placed the equipment on the surface of Mars. Its solar panels are now open, catching sunlight and powering the spacecraft. It is equipped to drive a device up to 16  (5 ) down into Mars's surface, a record for Mars probes. This is to help characterize heat flow from the planet. Insight also has ultra sensitive seismometers which it is to use to detect Mars earthquakes for the first time.  By recording the seismic waves from these quakes, InSight would help scientists infer things about the interior of Mars, such as how seismically active it is. InSight has as single , with which NASA plans to assess signals from different types of vibrational wave, triangulate their sources, and so derive information about the planetary interior. 

InSight was launched May 5 of this year and traveled reportedly 301,223,981 miles (somewhat over 484,773,000 kilometres) between planets followed by two suitcase-sized cube satellites called , individually MarCO-A and MarCO-B, which relayed information to Earth during the landing process.

Previous successful landers on Mars include '''', '''', '''', '''', '''', ''Phoenix'', and . Of these, only ''Curiosity'' is still in communication with Earth, after NASA lost communication with ''Opportunity'' in June. InSight's landing spot in the Elysium Planitia is about 600 km from ''Curiosity'''s landing site in .