Many Worlds

Tag: InSight

InSight Lands on Mars For Unique Mission

November 26, 2018 / / 0 Comments

NASA’s InSight Lander has returned its first picture from Mars via the MarCO CubeSat mission. (NASA)

 

NASA’s InSight lander touched down at 11:54 Pacific Time and followed a seven-month, 300 million-mile (485 million kilometer) journey from Southern California that started back in May.

InSight will spend the next few hours cleaning its camera lens and unfurling its solar arrays.

Once NASA confirms that the solar arrays have been properly deployed, engineers will spend the next three months preparing the lander’s science instruments to begin collecting data.

The touchdown continues NASA’s good fortunes with Mars landings, and is the fifth successful landing in a row.

Only 40% of missions by any agency sent to pass by, orbit or land on Mars have been successful, and NASA has certainly had some failures, too.

This is by way of saying that any successful mission to Mars is a great accomplishment.

The European Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation and the team of ESA and Russia’s Roscosmos currently have satellites orbiting the planet, and Japan, China. Russia and the United Arab Emirates have Mars missions planned for the next decade.  The next NASA mission to the planet is the Mars 2020 rover, a follow-up to the still exploring Curiosity rover which landed in 2012.

 

For those who might have missed it, here is our recent Many Worlds column about the novel science planned for InSight:

 

An artist illustration of the InSight lander on Mars. InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is designed to look for tectonic activity and meteorite impacts, study how much heat is still flowing through the planet, and track Mars’ wobble as it orbits the sun. While InSight is a Mars mission, it will help answer key questions about the formation of the other rocky planets of the solar system and exoplanets beyond. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

In the known history of our 4.5-billion-year-old solar system,  the insides of but one planet have been explored and studied.  While there’s a lot left to know about the crust, the mantle and the core of the Earth, there is a large and vibrant field dedicated to that learning.

Sometime next month, an extensive survey of the insides of a second solar system planet will begin.  That planet is Mars and, assuming safe arrival, the work will start after the InSight lander touches down on November 26.… Read more

Probing The Insides of Mars to Learn How Rocky Planets Are Formed

November 8, 2018 / / 0 Comments

An artist illustration of the InSight lander on Mars. InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is designed to look for tectonic activity and meteorite impacts, study how much heat is still flowing through the planet, and track Mars’ wobble as it orbits the sun. While InSight is a Mars mission, it will help answer key questions about the formation of the other rocky planets of the solar system and exoplanets beyond. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

In the known history of our 4.5-billion-year-old solar system,  the insides of but one planet have been explored and studied.  While there’s a lot left to know about the crust, the mantle and the core of the Earth, there is a large and vibrant field dedicated to that learning.

Sometime next month, an extensive survey of the insides of a second solar system planet will begin.  That planet is Mars and, assuming safe arrival, the work will start after the InSight lander touches down on November 26.

This is not a mission that will produce dazzling images and headlines about the search for life on Mars.  But in terms of the hard science it is designed to perform, InSight has the potential to tell us an enormous amount about the makeup of Mars, how it formed, and possibly why is it but one-third the size of its terrestrial cousins, Earth and Venus.

“We know a lot about the surface of Mars, we know a lot about its atmosphere and even about its ionosphere,” says Bruce Banerdt, the mission’s principal investigator, in a NASA video. “But we don’t know very much about what goes on a mile below the surface, much less 2,000 miles below the surface.”

The goal of InSight is to fill that knowledge gap, helping NASA map out the deep structure of Mars.  And along the way, learn about the inferred formation and interiors of exoplanets, too.

Equitorial Mars and the InSight landing site, with noting of other sites. (NASA)

The lander will touch down at Elysium Planitia, a flat expanse due north of the Curiosity landing site.  The destination was selected because it is about as safe as a Mars landing site could be, and InSight did not need to be a more complex site with a compelling surface to explore.

“While I’m looking forward to those first images from the surface, I am even more eager to see the first data sets revealing what is happening deep below our landing pads.”… Read more

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