NASA InSight Lander Arrives on Martian Surface to Learn What Lies Beneath

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#1 NASA InSight Lander Arrives on Martian Surface to Learn What Lies Beneath

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November 26, 2018
RELEASE 18-104
NASA InSight Lander Arrives on Martian Surface to Learn What Lies Beneath
NASA's InSight Mars lander acquired this image of the area in front of the lander using its lander-mounted, Instrument Context Camera (ICC). This image was acquired on Nov. 26, 2018, Sol 0 of the InSight mission where the local mean solar time for the image exposures was 13:34:21. Each ICC image has a field of view of 124 x 124 degrees.<br />Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA's InSight Mars lander acquired this image of the area in front of the lander using its lander-mounted, Instrument Context Camera (ICC). This image was acquired on Nov. 26, 2018, Sol 0 of the InSight mission where the local mean solar time for the image exposures was 13:34:21. Each ICC image has a field of view of 124 x 124 degrees.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
18-104.jpg (116.89 KiB) Viewed 3258 times
Mars has just received its newest robotic resident. NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander successfully touched down on the Red Planet after an almost seven-month, 300-million-mile (458-million-kilometer) journey from Earth.

InSight’s two-year mission will be to study the deep interior of Mars to learn how all celestial bodies with rocky surfaces, including Earth and the Moon, formed.

InSight launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California May 5. The lander touched down Monday, Nov. 26, near Mars' equator on the western side of a flat, smooth expanse of lava called Elysium Planitia, with a signal affirming a completed landing sequence at approximately noon PST (3 p.m. EST).

"Today, we successfully landed on Mars for the eighth time in human history,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “InSight will study the interior of Mars, and will teach us valuable science as we prepare to send astronauts to the Moon and later to Mars. This accomplishment represents the ingenuity of America and our international partners and it serves as a testament to the dedication and perseverance of our team. The best of NASA is yet to come, and it is coming soon.”

The landing signal was relayed to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, via one of NASA's two small experimental Mars Cube One (MarCO) CubeSats, which launched on the same rocket as InSight and followed the lander to Mars. They are the first CubeSats sent into deep space. After successfully carrying out a number of communications and in-flight navigation experiments, the twin MarCOs were set in position to receive transmissions during InSight's entry, descent and landing.

From Fast to Slow

"We hit the Martian atmosphere at 12,300 mph (19,800 kilometers per hour), and the whole sequence to touching down on the surface took only six-and-a-half minutes," said InSight project manager Tom Hoffman at JPL. "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."

Confirmation of a successful touchdown is not the end of the challenges of landing on the Red Planet. InSight's surface-operations phase began a minute after touchdown. One of its first tasks is to deploy its two decagonal solar arrays, which will provide power. That process begins 16 minutes after landing and takes another 16 minutes to complete.

The InSight team expects a confirmation later Monday that the spacecraft's solar panels successfully deployed. Verification will come from NASA's Odyssey spacecraft, currently orbiting Mars. That signal is expected to reach InSight's mission control at JPL about five-and-a-half hours after landing.

"We are solar powered, so getting the arrays out and operating is a big deal," said Hoffman. "With the arrays providing the energy we need to start the cool science operations, we are well on our way to thoroughly investigate what's inside of Mars for the very first time."

InSight will begin to collect science data within the first week after landing, though the teams will focus mainly on preparing to set InSight's instruments on the Martian ground. At least two days after touchdown, the engineering team will begin to deploy InSight's 5.9-foot-long (1.8-meter-long) robotic arm so that it can take images of the landscape.

"Landing was thrilling, but I'm looking forward to the drilling," said InSight principal investigator Bruce Banerdt of JPL. "When the first images come down, our engineering and science teams will hit the ground running, beginning to plan where to deploy our science instruments. Within two or three months, the arm will deploy the mission's main science instruments, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) and Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instruments."

InSight will operate on the surface for one Martian year, plus 40 Martian days, or sols, until Nov. 24, 2020. The mission objectives of the two small MarCOs which relayed InSight’s telemetry was completed after their Martian flyby.

"That's one giant leap for our intrepid, briefcase-sized robotic explorers," said Joel Krajewski, MarCOproject manager at JPL. "I think CubeSats have a big future beyond Earth's orbit, and the MarCO team is happy to trailblaze the way."

With InSight’s landing at Elysium Planitia, NASA has successfully soft-landed a vehicle on the Red Planet eight times.

"Every Mars landing is daunting, but now with InSight safely on the surface we get to do a unique kind of science on Mars," said JPL director Michael Watkins. "The experimental MarCO CubeSats have also opened a new door to smaller planetary spacecraft. The success of these two unique missions is a tribute to the hundreds of talented engineers and scientists who put their genius and labor into making this a great day."

JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The MarCO CubeSats were built and managed by JPL. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES, and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP), provided the SEIS instrument, with significant contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, the Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH) in Switzerland, Imperial College and Oxford University in the United Kingdom, and JPL. DLR provided the HP3 instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain's Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the wind sensors.

For more information about InSight, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/insight/

For more information about MarCO, visit:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cubesat/missions/marco.php

For more information about NASA's Mars missions, go to:

https://www.nasa.gov/mars

-end-
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#2 Re: NASA InSight Lander Arrives on Martian Surface to Learn What Lies Beneath

Post by luke strawwalker »

I watched this on YouTube after the fact... amazing to see a landing on Mars! I was baling hay at the time and couldn't watch it on NASA TV in real time...

Now if they'd just land one with a core drilling attachment and a sample return vehicle...

Later! OL J R :)
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#3 Re: NASA InSight Lander Arrives on Martian Surface to Learn What Lies Beneath

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And it wouldn't hurt if someone accidentally added some gold nuggets or flakes to one of the sample tubes beforehand. I remember reading someplace, I think in one of Buzz Aldrin's books that a technician tried handing a small pouch of gold dust on his way to the capsule. It was to insure that we continued returning to the moon. Could you imagine if Buzz had accepted that offer? I think we would be far more advanced with our space exploring.

It's a sad state of affairs, but do you think the American continents would have been so explored (or exploited if you lean that way) if the early Spanish explorers hadn't found gold and silver they could swipe from the natives? Typing this I believe I can answer that question definitively. No, we wouldn't have had nearly as much expansion. My proof? As far as I can recall from my public school American History (at least taught to me prior to any major national tinkering in the education universe), when the Vikings came and initially set up a settlement, they didn't find anything really worth exploiting aside from fertile soil. When the settlers disappeared, there was no real reason to expend more resources to find out what happened. Economically it was a losing proposition, so no further expeditions were sent forth.

I guess that sooner or later, expanding populations would have forced migration to the new world, but without the enticement of riches galore, it would have been a much slower development

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#4 Re: NASA InSight Lander Arrives on Martian Surface to Learn What Lies Beneath

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Well, when it comes to the Vikings landing in Newfoundland, it was basically beyond their technology at the time... or rather, stretching it to its absolute limits. They had colonized Iceland and were attempting to colonize Greenland, but it was SO far away it made things a struggle... plus, they refused to adapt to the environment, as the native Inuits had shown them how to hunt seals and eat whale blubber and fish and stuff like that, but they insisted on trying to raise livestock and produce hay and forage to sustain them, plus grown their own vegetables and stuff in the "normal" way they were accustomed to in a more hospitable environment. The Greenland colony was the "jumping off" point for their ventures to Newfoundland... Plus, they didn't do ANYTHING to endear themselves to the local inhabitants-- in fact they tried to rob, rape, and pillage in typical Viking fashion, and found that the natives were more than capable of fighting back, particularly since there was not much difference in their technologies of the time (hand to hand combat weapons and tactics, no gunpowder). SO, once they had established the fact in the native's minds that they were raiders and not settlers and it was not advantageous to try to strike deals with them or conduct trade, since the Vikings were interested in what they could take, not trade, the natives basically took on the attitude that "if you see Vikings landing, go get help, everybody get armed, and kill them or drive them off." Being that they were at the end of an EXTREMELY tenuous supply chain, relying on basically everything to come from Iceland via Greenland, and they pissed off the natives to the point they couldn't establish a "colony" to 'live off the land" and sustain their presence, once the Greenland colony collapsed, the Vikings didn't return to North America, because they simply couldn't without the jumping off point in Greenland to sustain the journey. Had they been more amenable to trade and not pillaging and attacking the natives, and dedicated themselves to establishing a colony in Newfoundland rather than simply raiding as they had done elsewhere, then history would have turned out VERY differently... Had they gotten a foothold in North America, it would have STRENGTHENED the Greenland colony, since it could be supplied much easier and more fully from a fertile North American colony nearby, rather than the feeble meager supplies it received from Iceland and via the route all the way back to Scandinavia... This would have shored up the entire route, and eventually made trade between the North American colony and Scandinavia possible, as well as making North America a lucrative destination as well... But because of failure to adapt, failure to "see the big picture" and continue on "business as usual", they found themselves landing in VERY hostile territory after their first encounters, and Greenland's colony persisted in attempting "European" type agriculture in basically an icy wasteland that had been experiencing a slight warming trend for a few decades, which is all that allowed them to get a toe-hold colony there in the first place... they refused to adopt the native's methods for exploiting the available resources, and so when the weather turned from the unusually favorable pattern that coincided with their first arrival and establishment in Greenland back to a more "normal" cold and frigid weather pattern, their "European" agriculture methods were insufficient and their colony collapsed, and with it the route to North America...

Ultimately, resources in space will be monetarily feasible to exploit... but it's going to take a LOT more development in reducing the cost of space launch and travel and space operations for that to happen. Basically, they could have found GOLD BRICKS on the Moon, and it would have cost more to launch a crew there to pick them up and bring them back than they were worth. IOW, a money-losing proposition, due to launch and mission costs. With SpaceX blazing the way for an actually sensible reusable launch system (even if it is in its early days), and reusable spacecraft (which the shuttle was a whole different can of worms-- not a fan), then perhaps the day isn't far off when it will be feasible to actually mine minerals or materials in space or produce products in space that will be economically viable to sell here on Earth. It won't be NASA or the ISS doing it though-- it'll be private industry, because NASA has proven itself a true bureaucracy, and it simply cannot control costs or think "outside the box" enough to do it. NASA would rather talk grandiosely about doing it in a few decades, make a lot of pretty rocket porn (computer simulations), do millions of dollars worth of studies, concoct test programs that fit into the existing programs (like ISS) in order to justify their continued huge expenditures on those programs for as long as possible, and dream up ways of doing the mission "someday" that fits the checkboxes of political expediency and makes the existing contractors and power brokers in government and industry happy, rather than the ones with the most probability of success or the greatest versatility and most efficient or that contains costs...

I've read Jack Schmitt's book about returning to the Moon to mine lunar Helium 3 for use in fusion reactors... imagine a briefcase size container coming back once a year worth $100 billion dollars for its contents... Now THAT would be worthwhile, BUT it would require an ENORMOUS infrastructure be established on the Moon and the supporting flights to make that possible. In short, a commitment nobody is willing to make at this point.

I'm highly in favor of the Moon as a jumping off point into the solar system. I don't think we can realistically do Mars, in any sort of sustainable way beyond "flags and footprints", WITHOUT going to the Moon and doing the basic research and development necessary there, if only as a testing grounds. I think that, if lunar ISRU (resource utilization) was done, say tapping lunar ice trapped in shadowed craters at the poles, and using the abundant solar power on the lunar surface to produce rocket propellant (hydrogen and oxygen) from it, then the Moon could be a real contributor to a sustainable Mars infrastructure. The benefits from other science "along for the ride" done on the Moon should be self-evident. The thing is, how to "do the Moon" without getting tied down there in some boondoggle mega-program that becomes an end in itself, rather than pushing on to Mars, and of course deciding how long and what actually should be the goals on the Moon in support of pushing on to Mars, and how that will "hand over" to a Mars program... I view a return to the Moon as much like the Gemini program was necessary as a precursor to Apollo-- to prove the technology and the operational requirements, develop the skills and technology necessary for Apollo. What's a shame was, the capabilities and supporting equipment developed for Gemini was abandoned and not leveraged or built on. I don't think we should make that mistake after a return to the Moon in support of a Mars program... We just have to figure out how to do it in a "scaled down" fashion so it doesn't become an albatross around our neck preventing us from getting to Mars, the way the shuttle and ISS have become boondoggle albatrosses that have held the space program hostage for decades...

Later! OL J R :)
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#5 Re: NASA InSight Lander Arrives on Martian Surface to Learn What Lies Beneath

Post by luke strawwalker »

Commander wrote: Wed, 05 Dec 18, 02:04 am And it wouldn't hurt if someone accidentally added some gold nuggets or flakes to one of the sample tubes beforehand. I remember reading someplace, I think in one of Buzz Aldrin's books that a technician tried handing a small pouch of gold dust on his way to the capsule. It was to insure that we continued returning to the moon. Could you imagine if Buzz had accepted that offer? I think we would be far more advanced with our space exploring.
Which reminds me of a funny story...

A few years back, we used to go to some friends of my wife's family up in Indiana; every year they put on a nice big Fourth of July party at their farm for everyone. Betty grew up with his wife and they were friends in church and school, she, her sister, and Betty. Her husband was a local well-known farmer that my BIL was friends (well, acquaintances anyway) with.

SO, we were hanging out around the barn, looking over the farm machinery and combines and talking about crops and farming, and the subject of wheat came up... He had been growing wheat, as had my BIL back in the very early 2000's when I first knew them, but he'd abandoned growing wheat not long after Betty and I were married. The host had continued growing wheat until just the year before, but he'd stopped too; most of the farmers in the area had quit growing wheat, except for Mennonites that needed the straw for the bedding, and the grain was just a 'side crop". He frowned at the mention of wheat and said, "No, I don't grow that anymore"...

Curious, I asked, "Why is that?? Seems like yall would have SOME market for it, and being this far north, your adapted for it...plus you can double-crop beans in behind it..."

He looked at me and said deadpan, "I'm convinced if I threw GOLD NUGGETS into a load of wheat, they'd DOCK IT FOR FOREIGN MATTER and still steal it from me... they just grade wheat SO hard and it's SO cheap that it's just not worth the time or effort any more... I can put in other crops and make more money, so WHY would I want to even mess with wheat??"

Gold nuggets earning a deduction for foreign matter contamination... that actually made me laugh, because I'm sure it's quite close to the truth... part of the reason why we quit row cropping and just went all beef cattle... not worth the time or effort or expense or headache to grow 60 cent cotton in a day and age when 60 cents won't even buy you a cup of coffee; when I was a kid cotton was 60 cents and you could buy a 2 piece chicken dinner and a coke for less than a dollar (at Ron's chicken). A dollar an hour was a decent wage back then! Now just flipping patties, people want $15 bucks an hour, but cotton is STILL a lousy 60 cents a pound... would have been the equivalent of about 6 cents back then... just NOT WORTH THE EFFORT...

Later! OL J R :)
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