OrbitalHub

Wikipedia dixit:

“InSight is a robotic lander designed to study the interior of the planet Mars. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 […] and is expected to land on the surface of Mars (landing site: Elysium Planitia) on 26 November 2018, where it will deploy a seismometer and burrow a heat probe. It will also perform a radio science experiment to study the internal structure of Mars.

The lander was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space Systems and was originally planned for launch in March 2016. Due to the failure of its SEIS instrument prior to launch, NASA announced in December 2015 that the mission had been postponed, and in March 2016, the launch was rescheduled for 5 May 2018, when it launched successfully. The name is a backronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.

InSight’s objective is to place a stationary lander equipped with a seismometer and heat transfer probe on the surface of Mars to study the planet’s early geological evolution. This could bring new understanding of the Solar System’s terrestrial planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars — and the Earth’s Moon. By reusing technology from the Mars Phoenix lander, which successfully landed on Mars in 2008, it is expected that the cost and risk will be reduced.

Following a persistent vacuum failure in the main scientific instrument, the launch window was missed, and the InSight spacecraft was returned to Lockheed Martin’s facility in Denver, Colorado, for storage. NASA officials decided in March 2016 to spend an estimated US$150 million to delay launching InSight to May 2018. This would allow time for the seismometer issue to be fixed, although it increased the cost from the previous US$675 million to a total of $830 million.

InSight will place a single stationary lander on Mars to study its deep interior and address a fundamental issue of planetary and Solar System science: understanding the processes that shaped the rocky planets of the inner Solar System (including Earth) more than four billion years ago.

InSight’s primary objective is to study the earliest evolutionary history of the processes that shaped Mars. By studying the size, thickness, density and overall structure of Mars’ core, mantle and crust, as well as the rate at which heat escapes from the planet’s interior, InSight will provide a glimpse into the evolutionary processes of all of the rocky planets in the inner Solar System. The rocky inner planets share a common ancestry that begins with a process called accretion. As the body increases in size, its interior heats up and evolves to become a terrestrial planet, containing a core, mantle and crust. Despite this common ancestry, each of the terrestrial planets is later shaped and molded through a poorly understood process called differentiation. InSight mission’s goal is to improve the understanding of this process and, by extension, terrestrial evolution, by measuring the planetary building blocks shaped by this differentiation: a terrestrial planet’s core, mantle and crust.

The mission will determine if there is any seismic activity, measure the amount of heat flow from the interior, estimate the size of Mars’ core and whether the core is liquid or solid. This data would be the first of its kind for Mars. It is also expected that frequent meteor airbursts (10–200 detectable events per year for InSight) will provide additional seismo-acoustic signals to probe the interior of Mars. The mission’s secondary objective is to conduct an in-depth study of geophysics, tectonic activity and the effect of meteorite impacts on Mars, which could provide knowledge about such processes on Earth. Measurements of crust thickness, mantle viscosity, core radius and density, and seismic activity should result in an accuracy increase of 3X to 10X compared with current data.

In terms of fundamental processes shaping planetary formation, it is thought that Mars contains the most in-depth and accurate historical record, because it is big enough to have undergone the earliest accretion and internal heating processes that shaped the terrestrial planets, but is small enough to have retained signs of those processes.”

Video Credit: ULA

ESA dixit:

“Spacecraft in orbit and on Mars’s surface have made many exciting discoveries, transforming our understanding of the planet and unveiling clues to the formation of our Solar System, as well as helping us understand our home planet. The next step is to bring samples to Earth for detailed analysis in sophisticated laboratories where results can be verified independently and samples can be reanalysed as laboratory techniques continue to improve.

Bringing Mars to Earth is no simple undertaking—it would require at least three missions from Earth and one never-been-done-before rocket launch from Mars.

A first mission, NASA’s 2020 Mars Rover, is set to collect surface samples in pen-sized canisters as it explores the Red Planet. Up to 31 canisters will be filled and readied for a later pickup – geocaching gone interplanetary.

In the same period, ESA’s ExoMars rover, which is also set to land on Mars in 2021, will be drilling up to two meters below the surface to search for evidence of life.

A second mission with a small fetch rover would land nearby and retrieve the samples in a Martian search-and-rescue operation. This rover would bring the samples back to its lander and place them in a Mars Ascent Vehicle – a small rocket to launch the football-sized container into Mars orbit.

A third launch from Earth would provide a spacecraft sent to orbit Mars and rendezvous with the sample containers. Once the samples are safely collected and loaded into an Earth entry vehicle, the spacecraft would return to Earth, release the vehicle to land in the United States, where the samples will be retrieved and placed in quarantine for detailed analysis by a team of international scientists.”

Video Credit: NASA/ESA

NASA dixit:

“NASA’s InSight mission launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base for Mars on May 5, 2018—the first interplanetary launch from the West Coast. InSight is expected to land on the Red Planet on November 26, 2018. More than a mission to Mars, InSight will help scientists understand the formation and early evolution of all rocky planets, including Earth.”

Video Credit: NASA

NASA dixit:

“All of NASA’s interplanetary launches to date have been from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in part because the physics of launching off the East Coast are better for journeys to other planets. However, InSight will break the mold by launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It will be the first launch to another planet from the West Coast. A whole new region of the country will get to see an interplanetary launch when InSight rockets into the sky. On a clear day, the launch may be visible from Santa Maria, California to San Diego, California.

Weather permitting, InSight’s pre-dawn launch (4:05 a.m.) may be visible for more than 10 million Californians without a need for them to drive to a special location. Just wake up early, check the InSight Website for assurance the launch is still on schedule, go outside, look at the western sky, marvel at the rocket’s flare as it travels southward, and cheer InSight bon voyage to Mars. The launch window is May 5 through June 8, 2018.”

Video credit: NASA

NASA JPL dixit:

“Starting next year, scientists will get their first look deep below the surface of Mars. That’s when NASA will send the first robotic lander dedicated to exploring the planet’s subsurface. InSight, which stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, will study marsquakes to learn about the Martian crust, mantle and core.

When rocks crack or shift, they give off seismic waves that bounce throughout a planet. These waves, better known as quakes, travel at different speeds depending on the geologic material they travel through. Seismometers, like InSight’s SEIS instrument, measure the size, frequency and speed of these quakes, offering scientists a snapshot of the material they pass through.

Mars’ geologic record includes lighter rocks and minerals — which rose from the planet’s interior to form the Martian crust — and heavier rocks and minerals that sank to form the Martian mantle and core. By learning about the layering of these materials, scientists can explain why some rocky planets turn into an “Earth” rather than a “Mars” or “Venus” — a factor that is essential to understanding where life can appear in the universe.

Each time a quake happens on Mars, it will give InSight a “snapshot” of the planet’s interior. The InSight team estimates the spacecraft will see between a couple dozen to several hundred quakes over the course of the mission. Small meteorites, which pass through the thin Martian atmosphere on a regular basis, will also serve as seismic “snapshots.” One challenge will be getting a complete look at Mars using only one location. Most seismology on Earth takes measurements from multiple stations. InSight will have the planet’s only seismometer, requiring scientists to parse the data in creative ways.

InSight will measure more than seismology. The Doppler shift from a radio signal on the lander can reveal whether the planet’s core is still molten; a self-burrowing probe is designed to measure heat from the interior. Wind, pressure and temperature sensors will allow scientists to subtract vibrational “noise” caused by weather. Combining all this data will give us the most complete picture of Mars yet.”

Video credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

NASA Goddard dixit:

“Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Both are small, airless bodies with irregular shapes. Because they lack protective atmospheres and magnetospheres, Phobos and Deimos are directly exposed to the solar wind for part of their orbits. Now, a study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center suggests that the solar wind creates a complex electrical environment around Phobos, giving its night side and shadowed craters a static electric charge. This could impact plans for future robotic and human explorers to study the moons of Mars.”

Video credit: NASA Goddard