Mars InSight lander

SpaceNut · 2013-12-25 19:36:07

Mars lander to launch from California on Atlas 5 in 2016
InSight will take off from Space Launch Complex 3-East at Vandenberg, the West Coast home of ULA's Atlas 5 rocket.

InSight's cost is projected to be approximately $480 million, excluding launch services and contributions from international partners in France and Germany. The French space agency, CNES, is providing InSight's $42 million seismometer. Germany is funding the lander's underground heat probe. According to NASA, the total cost for the launch of InSight is approximately $160 million, including spacecraft processing,

InSight spacecraft is based on the Phoenix lander launched to the red planet in 2007. Phoenix was sized to fly on the smaller Delta 2 rocket, meaning an Atlas 5 has plenty of power to dispatch InSight to Mars

The InSight mission will deploy a seismometer to make the first direct measurements of Mars quakes. The lander will also employ a hammering drill to burrow up to 15 feet underground, taking temperature readings to measure heat changes at different layers immediately beneath the Martian surface.

SpaceNut · 2013-12-25 20:03:36

Oh wear oh wear are we going?

NASA Studying 4 Landing Site Options for 2016 Mars Mission

On a NASA-issued map, the InSight landing site candidates appear to be clustered in a zone north of Gale Crater — where the huge Curiosity rover landed in 2012 — and to the northwest of Gusev Crater, where the smaller Spirit rover landed in 2004. NASA will now use its powerful Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in orbit around the Red Planet to further study the potential landing sites and eventually make a final decision.

JoshNH4H · 2013-12-25 22:58:04

Very exciting mission! If we know more about Mars' internal structure we'll be better able to predict the availability and location of various different kind of metal ores!

SpaceNut · 2013-12-26 11:09:14

I would have hoped for a second mission of the same but in a much more distant location for more data but I think this will allow scientist to determine if we can restart the core to get the magnetic field going as well as to a possible megoshere for solar radiation and cosmic ray protection.

SpaceNut · 2014-05-20 21:13:46

Lockheed Martin InSight spacecraft a NASA 2016 Mars Mission To Begin Building Spacecraft to launch from California in March 2016 and touch down on Mars six months later. InSight adapts a Lockheed Martin spacecraft design from the successful NASA Phoenix Mars Lander, mission duration is 630 days longer than Phoenix.

http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov/home.cfm

SpaceNut · 2014-05-26 15:44:39

I wonder about the writers that put these sort of tag lines in articles...

InSight will study Mars’ interior structure and pave the way for an eventual manned mission to the Red Planet.
Phoenix studied Mars’ potential to host microbial life and assisted in confirming the presence of water ice on the Martian surface.

Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight)

InSight will launch on an Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California which could be a problem with the current engine availability....

One of InSight’s experiments, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), uses a seismometer
that will scout for “marsquakes.”
SEIS is being developed by the French Space Agency (CNES) and features contributions from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), Imperial College and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
SEIS weighs 3 kg and consists of “a sphere including three Very Broad Band (VBB) seismic probes and their temperature sensors, three Short Period (SP) seismic probes and their temperature sensors, an acquisition electronics box… and the feedback boards for the VBB, SP probes and the MDE deployment system, a
deployment system (DPL)” and “software (S/W),” according to CNES.
SEIS’ three VBBs will be oblique pendulums that are “perfectly balanced” so they move when the surface beneath them moves. They will adjust for any unevenness with gravity or with the ground.

SpaceNut · 2014-05-26 15:50:54

More on the instruments that will be going to mars....

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/05/ … rs-lander/

A Planetary Hammer

The Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP³) is another of Insight’s experiments.

Designed by The German Aerospace Institute (DLR), HP³ will hammer 5 meters into the Martian surface, further than any probe has ever peered into Mars’ interior, and take subterranean temperature readings.

Tracking Wobble:

The Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE), another InSight experiment, will calculate the precession, or wobble, of Mars’ axis and provide clues to Mars’ internal structure.

According to RISE documentation from the 2012 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, RISE, like the studies before it, will use the Doppler shift, or change in frequency over time, of radio signals sent between Earth and Mars to calculate the degree of wobble in Mars’ axis.

Improved estimates of the amount of wobble in Mars’ axis will lead to more precise estimates of the size and consistency of the planet’s core, which is thought to be fluid.

SpaceNut · 2014-11-19 23:09:22

Lockheed Martin Begins Final Assembly Of Next Mars Lander scheduled to launch in March 2016.

A critical stage in the program, ATLO is when assembly of the spacecraft starts, moves through environmental testing and concludes with its launch. Over the next six months, technicians will install subsystems such as avionics, power, telecomm, mechanisms, thermal systems, and guidance, navigation and control. Science instruments will also be delivered by the mission partners to Lockheed Martin for integration with the spacecraft.

technicians-clean-room-insight-mars-lander-propulsion-proof-leak-testing-lg.jpg

SpaceNut · 2015-03-07 23:49:42

Crunch time: Next Mars lander enters final year before launch

Wednesday marked one year until the launch of a NASA seismic station to Mars, and scientists believe they have found a suitable operating post for the lander as engineers race to keep the mission on schedule for liftoff in a narrow 26-day window next March. The lander will take off aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, InSight’s liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is targeted for around 1:50 a.m. PST (4:50 a.m. EST; 0950 GMT) on March 4, 2016.

InSight’s cost is estimated at $542 million, according to a NASA budget document released in February.

NASA selects Mars landing site with help from THEMIS

NASA has selected Elysium Planitia as the prime landing area for InSight. This location is a region where ancient lava flows cover the ground.
InSight is not a rover. Built using the same flight platform as the Mars Phoenix lander, InSight will touch down in one place and stay there for its entire mission. Should something go wrong at the landing site the probe will not be able to drive to a better location to complete its mission. This increases the risk factor for the entire project. InSight’s mission is projected to last two Earth years.

SpaceNut · 2015-05-28 20:23:59

Getting closer to launch... InSight Mars Lander completes assembly ahead of 2016 launch

As the lander’s name suggests, the latest hardware to head to Mars will provide additional scientific insight into the planet during a mission that is set to last two years to record the interior for science..

SpaceNut · 2015-06-14 20:40:44

We now have another surprise with this mission and its NASA to send tiny helper spacecraft with the next Mars mission Who would of thought of cubesats for Mars....1 & 2, Called MarCO (short for Mars Cube One), the two spacecraft are a technology demonstration designed to help with communications at the critical moment when InSight touches down on Mars.

The cubesats come equipped with two solar panels and a pair of radio antennas that can be used to beam back information about InSight's Mars landing to Earth faster than traditional methods, NASA said.
The flyby MarCO mission may solve a key communications challenge for NASA.

Aka not a landing beacon but a landing monitor.

RobertDyck · 2015-12-22 13:34:02

NASA's 2016 Mars mission called off

NASA has called off its next Mars mission because of a leak in a science instrument.
The Insight spacecraft was supposed to take off in March and land on the red planet next year. But NASA said Tuesday that managers have suspended the launch because of an air leak in one of two prime science instruments, a seismometer which belongs to the French Space Agency. It was supposed to ship to the Southern California launch site next month. NASA said attempts to fix the leak have failed.
The lander is designed to examine the geology of Mars in depth.
Launch opportunities for Mars only occur every two years. It wasn't immediately clear whether NASA had cancelled the mission entirely or would delay it until 2018.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2015-12-22 13:34:15)

SpaceNut · 2016-02-18 20:16:34

NASA has called off the planned March 2016 launch of the InSight mission to Mars, following failure to repair a leaky instrument in the science payload...Well there seems to be little to none for news coming out about fixing the leak....

pia19664-MAIN_InSight%20Solar%20Arrays%20Open%204-30-15_0011.jpg

Such a shame to see this mission go to waste....

SpaceNut · 2016-03-08 21:05:37

We have been wondering whether or not the probe would be repaired and sent on its mission to mars on the next possible opening in 2018. I know that I have been wondering about the cost of the repair and I here it as a decision on whether NASA will proceed with the mission is expected as early as this week, Will NASA's InSight Mars Mission Launch in 2018?

NASA had hoped its next Mars probe would have launched by now. Instead, the agency is mulling whether to spend an extra $150 million to fix a problem with the spacecraft and re-target liftoff for May 2018, the next time Earth and Mars favorably align for flight.
The extra $150 million would bust the project's current cost cap of $675 million and likely delay other projects. NASA already had spent about $525 million on InSight when work was suspended.
The problem with InSight involves a nine-inch diameter spherical chamber that holds sensors needed to make seismic measurements. The chamber has to be able to maintain a near-perfect vacuum so the instruments can detect motions equivalent to the width of a hydrogen atom.
If approved, the revamped InSight spacecraft would launch on May 5, 2018, and land itself on Mars on Nov. 26, 2018, for a two-year mission.

SpaceNut · 2016-03-09 20:37:28

Word has it that Nasa is fixing the issue and that its going to launch in 2018.... I was going to say that if it had not been decided was that we should make a crowd funding for its repair but thats not needed at this point. Hopefully it will not have any other issues once done.

SpaceNut · 2016-09-08 16:42:06

Another update release of the mission will be a go to launch. September 2, 2016: NASA Approves 2018 Launch of Mars InSight Mission http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov/newsdisplay … s_ID=38537

http://mars.nasa.gov/programmissions/mi … e/insight/

InSight Key Dates

Launch Opportunity Opens: May 5, 2018
Landing: Landing: Nov. 26, 2018
Surface operations: 728 days / 708 sols
Instrument deployment: about 60 sols (including 20 sols margin)
Data volume over 1 Martian year: More than 29 Gb (processed seismic data posted to the Web in 2 weeks; remaining science data less than 3 months, no proprietary period)

SpaceNut · 2017-09-03 19:07:54

Preparations for Deployment of InSight Lander to Mars are Ramping Up!

InSight Lander for its scheduled launch in 2018.

Once deployed to Mars, the lander will reveal things about Mars’ interior geology and composition, shedding new light on the history of the Red Planet’s formation and evolution.

RGClark · 2017-09-05 08:19:09

SpaceNut wrote:

Preparations for Deployment of InSight Lander to Mars are Ramping Up!
InSight Lander for its scheduled launch in 2018.
Once deployed to Mars, the lander will reveal things about Mars’ interior geology and composition, shedding new light on the history of the Red Planet’s formation and evolution.

Mars Insight scheduled to land near the equator already will be a great geology mission but the recent discovery of large water deposits near the equator on Mars raises the possibility it could also be a great astrobiology mission:

Water ice found near Mars’s equator could entice colonists and life-seekers.
Find also poses climate puzzle.
SCIENCEMAG.ORG

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/ … fe-seekers

The full research article is available free, full-text online:

Equatorial locations of water on Mars: Improved resolution maps based on Mars Odyssey Neutron Spectrometer data.
Icarus, Volume 299, 1 January 2018, Pages 148-160.
Jack T.Wilson, Vincent R.Eke, Richard J.Massey, Richard C.Elphic, William C.Feldman, Sylvestre Maurice, Luís F.A.Teodoro
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar … 3516306029

Mars Insight is scheduled to land in Elysium Planitia at 4°N 136°E:

Mars Insight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InSight#S … ic_payload

Here is a map from the Icarus paper showing the regions of high water(ice) content:

1-s2.0-S0019103516306029-gr3_lrg.jpg

Notice in the second panel in the image there is a region of high water content indicated in blue near the Mars Insight landing site. However, for Mars landers you can't get the landing position exactly right and there is unfortunately a larger area above and to the right of very low water content indicated in red near the landing site. The question is could they stick the landing near the high water region?

One of the Mars Insight instruments might be ideal for detecting the near surface water since it will include a subsurface borer able to drill down to 5 meters:

But what instruments could be used to distinguish liquid water from ice water?

In view of the possibility of liquid water existing near surface, I would also like to see a true microscope put on the lander. Of all the landers sent to Mars none included a true optical microscope. The best optical resolution of the imagers sent to Mars were no better than that of a geologist's hand lens.

Bob Clark

Last edited by RGClark (2017-09-05 11:11:04)

SpaceNut · 2017-09-05 18:52:39

Adding post made elsewhere as they are also appropiate to this topic as well

RobertDyck wrote:

There are some in NASA who feel humans do not belong in space. They feel exploration should be done exclusively by robotic explorers. Many within NASA, if not most, see space exploration only for science. They believe science can be done with robots, so we don't need humans in space. That's obviously wrong, but that's one major force we're fighting.
Another force is bureaucracy. The bureaucrats always add obstacles, always fear failure. If you watch the video for InSight, they emphasize heratage from previous missions. That's great, but they also emphasize low risk. That's become so pervasive within NASA that they blatantly admit it to the public, and even brag about it.
YouTube: InSight: Digging Deep with NASA's Next Mars Lander
Another problem is "Old Space" contractors. Corporate executives at Boeing and Lockheed-Martin don't see any value in NASA at all. They treat NASA as a means to funnel government money into their own pockets. They don't want to actually achieve anything, they want to manipulate anything NASA hires them to do in order to maximize revenue. Robert Zubrin talks about engineers being told to shut-up, that if NASA wants something then they can pay for it. After reading Dr. Zubrin's book, I spoke with several engineers who worked on Shuttle, at the time the Shuttle program was on-going. They all reported they came up with ways to reduce labour, to increase the flight rate and reduce cost. They all (*ALL*) report they were told to shut up. One engineer reported the manager said "you're taking food out of people's mouths". This is obviously stupid, if time to process Shuttle were reduced, they wouldn't reduce the cost per year, instead they would launch Shuttle more times per year. Now those same project managers and corporate executives are working on SLS and Orion.

SpaceNut · 2017-09-05 18:57:18

Oldfart1939 wrote:

In post #66 of this thread, Robert did hit on something that is very true: many scientist types don't believe in manned space flight, and are absolutely (and wrongly) convinced that robotics can do everything necessary to "do science' on Mars. I have a very good friend who is a lead scientist at the NIF (National Ignition Facility) at Lawrence, Livermore National Laboratory, with whom I've had many discussions (OK, arguments!) on this topic. When I start talking about drill rigs looking for subsurface water, he envisions a robotic drill system that might be able (on a good Sol) manage to drill down 3 to 5 meters. I think in terms of oil drill rigs requiring crews of 60 men to drill down 7 to 10 Kilometers. That cannot be robotic. We've done almost s much as we can ask from robotics; it's now long past time for human exploration!

RobertDyck wrote:

In 2002 the president of the Canadian Space Agency proposed a Canadian Mars Rover. A Canadian mining technology centre developed a multi-segment drill for this rover: 10 segments at 1 metre each. They tested it in a box of mixed materials: hard rock, soft rock, gravel, sand, clay. The drill took hours to go through 2 metres, but went right through everything including the plywood bottom of the box. Powered by electricity, without any lubricant (dry drilling) so appropriate for space. Unfortunately Canadian Parliament didn't approve funding. My point is a robot could drill down to 10 metres, but that's it.

While I am not a drilling rig expert the movie Armageddon captures that theme when Nasa ried to steal a drilling rig design from the patent office and got it wrong as Bruce Willis pointed out. If you want something drilled call in the experts in doing so....

RobertDyck · 2017-09-05 21:41:42

CBC July 2003: A Canadian contribution?
Image of the prototype:

An artist's impression of CanaDrill on a Mars lander. Image hosted by Canadian Space Agency. Note: the president of CSA talked about putting it on a rover, not a static lander.

SpaceNut · 2018-05-05 11:12:46

7 ways NASA's InSight mission will go where no Mars explorer has before. The new probe will be able to answer questions about whether the Red Planet is alive or dead.

That is about to change with the upcoming launch of the $800 million InSight lander, the first NASA mission focused on the parts of Mars weve never seen before. The probe is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California on May 5, though current forecasts show only a 20 percent chance of favorable weather conditions.
When InSight finally reaches Mars, on Nov. 26, a system of parachutes and retro rockets will set the probe down on a flat equatorial plain called Elysium Planitia. An 8-foot-long robotic arm will deploy its instruments. Then for 708 Martian days (about two Earth years), the lander will give Mars the astronomical equivalent of a full-body scan.
Heat Flow and Physical Properties Probe (HP3) experiment will make precise measurements of Mars internal heat, left over from its formation 4.5 billion years ago and stoked by the decay of radioactive elements. To do that, the probe incorporates a self-hammering mole that will burrow up to 16 feet into the ground. This will be the deepest drilling ever done off Earth. Along the way, the probe will send out pulses of heat every 20 inches to study the nature of the underground rocks.

GW Johnson · 2018-05-05 12:37:46

The point of this mission is to find out how cooled and inactive Mars's core has become. The two main experiments are the seismometer and the drilled heat flow probe. If there is still tectonic activity from a core still effectively hot, it will show up as Mars quakes. The heat flow probe will let them infer (I repeat "infer"!!!) a core temperature.

As near as I can tell, it is not rigged to do much of anything else. "Infer" is first cousin to "assume". That brings one rather quickly to the ASS-U-ME problem. Don't believe the first papers published about the results of this. The science takes years of "run it up the flagpole and see who shoots and who salutes" before it settles out to the most likely truth. Even then it is only "most likely".

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2018-05-05 12:41:04)

SpaceNut · 2018-05-05 15:15:34

A 100% science mission with 204 days to landing on November 26th.

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/mission/overview/

We will get day to day weather information at the lander site as well as pressure to follow up with as general knowledge of climate for when man can go.

NASA technology experiment: two mini-spacecraft called Mars Cube One, or MarCO with a goal to test a new miniaturized deep space communication equipment and, if the MarCOs make it to Mars, may relay back InSight data as it enters the Martian atmosphere and lands. This will be a first test of miniaturized CubeSat technology at another planet, which researchers hope can offer new capabilities to future missions.
Mars' North Pole wobbles as it orbits the sun and InSight’s Rotation Interior Structure Experiment, RISE, precisely tracks the location of the lander. With the observations to provide detailed information on the size of Mars' iron-rich core. This will help to determine whether the core is liquid, and which other elements, besides iron, may be present.

Insight will journey many other hard at work Martian investigative probes, orbitors and rovers. https://mars.nasa.gov/

Next up will be the Mars 2020 rover mission which will include an instrument (MOXIE) to demonstrate the technology for oxygen generation.

https://www.nasa.gov/journeytomars/mars … ion-zones/

Mars Ascent Vehicle:
An essential element if NASA is ever to return materials (or people) from Mars, NASA’s Mars Exploration Program is currently investing in propulsion & guidance technology that could survive the trip to Mars and its harsh surface environments before being launched back into space.
Hybrid rocket motors using paraffin fuel burned with liquid oxides of nitrogen are especially promising for this application.
Within the thin Mars atmosphere, aerodynamic controls such as fins will not be effective, so investments are also being made in Liquid Injection Thrust Vector Control (LITVC). Using small ports to inject liquid oxidizer directly into the nozzle at different points, the direction of the MAV can be controlled quickly and effectively with no moving parts, even in the thin atmosphere on Mars.

louis · 2018-05-05 17:46:09

So little for nearly one billion dollars! Really, this is rather a shaming mission for NASA...

New Mars Forums

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#1 2013-12-25 19:36:07

Mars InSight lander

#2 2013-12-25 20:03:36

Re: Mars InSight lander

#3 2013-12-25 22:58:04

Re: Mars InSight lander

#4 2013-12-26 11:09:14

Re: Mars InSight lander

#5 2014-05-20 21:13:46

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#6 2014-05-26 15:44:39

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#7 2014-05-26 15:50:54

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#8 2014-11-19 23:09:22

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#9 2015-03-07 23:49:42

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#10 2015-05-28 20:23:59

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#11 2015-06-14 20:40:44

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#12 2015-12-22 13:34:02

Re: Mars InSight lander

#13 2016-02-18 20:16:34

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#14 2016-03-08 21:05:37

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#15 2016-03-09 20:37:28

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#16 2016-09-08 16:42:06

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#17 2017-09-03 19:07:54

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#18 2017-09-05 08:19:09

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#19 2017-09-05 18:52:39

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#20 2017-09-05 18:57:18

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#21 2017-09-05 21:41:42

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#22 2018-05-05 11:12:46

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#23 2018-05-05 12:37:46

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#24 2018-05-05 15:15:34

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#25 2018-05-05 17:46:09

Re: Mars InSight lander

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