26.10.2018
NASA to Host Briefing on November Mars InSight Landing
NASA's upcoming landing of the first-ever mission to study the heart of Mars will be the topic of a media briefing at 1:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 31 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The briefing will air live on NASA Television, the agency's website and the NASA InSight Facebook page.
NASA's InSight Mars Lander (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) will land on the Red Planet at approximately 3 p.m. EST (noon PST) Monday, Nov. 26. InSight will study the deep interior of Mars to learn how all celestial bodies with rocky surfaces, including Earth and the Moon, formed. The lander’s instruments include a seismometer to detect marsquakes and a probe to monitor the flow of heat in the planet's subsurface.
Briefing participants include:
- Lori Glaze, acting director of the Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters
- Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Tom Hoffman, InSight project manager at JPL
- Sue Smrekar, InSight deputy principal investigator at JPL
- Jaime Singer, InSight instrument deployment lead at JPL
Media not attending who would like to ask questions via phone during the event must provide their name and affiliation by noon EDT on Oct. 31, to JoAnna Wendel by email at joanna.r.wendel@nasa.gov.
The public can ask questions on Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA or by leaving a comment on the stream of the event on the NASA InSight Facebook page.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 1.11.2018
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Five Things to Know About InSight's Mars Landing
This is an illustration showing a simulated view of NASA's InSight lander about to land on the surface of Mars. This view shows the underside of the spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Every Mars landing is a knuckle-whitening feat of engineering. But each attempt has its own quirks based on where a spacecraft is going and what kind of science the mission intends to gather.
On Nov. 26, NASA will try to safely set a new spacecraft on Mars. InSight is a lander dedicated to studying the deep interior of the planet - the first mission ever to do so.
Here are a few things to know about InSight's landing.
Landing on Mars is hard
Only about 40 percent of the missions ever sent to Mars - by any space agency - have been successful. The U.S. is the only nation whose missions have survived a Mars landing. The thin atmosphere - just 1 percent of Earth's - means that there's little friction to slow down a spacecraft. Despite that, NASA has had a long and successful track record at Mars. Since 1965, it has flown by, orbited, landed on and roved across the surface of the Red Planet.
When NASA's InSight descends to the Red Planet on Nov. 26, 2018, it is guaranteed to be a white-knuckle event. Rob Manning, chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explains the critical steps that must happen in perfect sequence to get the robotic lander safely to the surface.
InSight uses tried-and-true technology
In 2008, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, successfully landed the Phoenix spacecraft at Mars' North Pole. InSight is based on the Phoenix spacecraft, both of which were built by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. Despite tweaks to its heat shield and parachute, the overall landing design is still very much the same: After separating from a cruise stage, an aeroshell descends through the atmosphere. The parachute and retrorockets slow the spacecraft down, and suspended legs absorb some shock from the touchdown.
InSight is landing on "the biggest parking lot on Mars"
One of the benefits of InSight's science instruments is that they can record equally valuable data regardless of where they are on the planet. That frees the mission from needing anything more complicated than a flat, solid surface (ideally with few boulders and rocks). For the mission's team, the landing site at Elysium Planitia is sometimes thought as "the biggest parking lot on Mars."
InSight was built to land in a dust storm
InSight's engineers have built a tough spacecraft, able to touch down safely in a dust storm if it needs to. The spacecraft's heat shield is designed to be thick enough to withstand being "sandblasted" by dust. Its parachute has suspension lines that were tested to be stronger than Phoenix's, in case it faces more air resistance due to the atmospheric conditions expected during a dust storm.
The entry, descent and landing sequence also has some flexibility to handle shifting weather. The mission team will be receiving daily weather updates from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in the days before landing so that they can tweak when InSight's parachute deploys and when it uses radar to find the Martian surface.
After landing, InSight will provide new science about rocky planets
InSight will teach us about the interior of planets like our own. The mission team hopes that by studying the deep interior of Mars, we can learn how other rocky worlds, including Earth and the Moon, formed. Our home planet and Mars were molded from the same primordial stuff more than 4.5 billion years ago but then became quite different. Why didn't they share the same fate?
When it comes to rocky planets, we've only studied one in detail: Earth. By comparing Earth's interior to that of Mars, InSight's team members hope to better understand our solar system. What they learn might even aid the search for Earth-like exoplanets, narrowing down which ones might be able to support life. So while InSight is a Mars mission, it's also much more than a Mars mission.
You can read more about how the science of the mission is unique here. A press kitreleased today includes additional information on the mission.
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. 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 provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (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 Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Polish Space Agency (CBK) and Astronika in Poland. Spain's Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the wind sensors.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 4.11.2018
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NASA has a new mission to Mars, and it's taking podcast listeners along for the ride.
Launching today, the eight-episode series "On a Mission" follows the InSight lander as it travels hundreds of millions of miles and attempts to land on Mars on Nov. 26. "On a Mission" will be the first JPL podcast to track a mission during flight, through interviews with the InSight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The first two episodes are available now at NASA, the InSight website, SoundCloud and Apple Podcasts. Episode One lays out the odds of reaching the surface safely – fewer than half of Mars missions make it.
"When things go beautifully it looks easy, but it's really not easy," said Sue Smrekar, deputy principal investigator for the InSight mission. "Any kind of exploration is just not easy or guaranteed – ever."
Narrated by host and science journalist Leslie Mullen and InSight team members, each episode blends humor and captivating storytelling to dig into the journey of the lander and the people who have spent years working on it. New episodes, running between 20 and 30 minutes, will be released weekly as InSight gets closer to Mars. The final episode will cover what happens when the team tries to land InSight on the Red Planet.
If successful, the lander will be the first robotic explorer to study the planet's "inner space" – its crust, mantle and core – in an effort to better understand the early formation of rocky planets in our inner solar system (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) and rocky exoplanets.
Future seasons of the podcast will focus on different missions and take listeners on new journeys through the universe.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 6.11.2018
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The Mars InSight Landing Site Is Just Plain Perfect
No doubt about it, NASA explores some of the most awe-inspiring locations in our solar system and beyond. Once seen, who can forget the majesty of astronaut Jim Irwin standing before the stark beauty of the Moon's Hadley Apennine mountain range, of the Hubble Space Telescope's gorgeous "Pillars of Creation" or Cassini's magnificent mosaic of Saturn?
Mars also plays a part in this visually compelling equation, with the high-definition imagery from the Curiosity rover of the ridges and rounded buttes at the base of Mount Sharp bringing to mind the majesty of the American Southwest. That said, Elysium Planitia – the site chosen for the Nov. 26 landing of NASA's InSight mission to Mars – will more than likely never be mentioned with those above because it is, well, plain.
"If Elysium Planitia were a salad, it would consist of romaine lettuce and kale – no dressing," said InSight principal investigator Bruce Banerdt at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "If it were an ice cream, it would be vanilla."
Yes, the landing site of NASA's next Mars mission may very well look like a stadium parking lot, but that is the way the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) project likes it.
"Previous missions to the Red Planet have investigated its surface by studying its canyons, volcanoes, rocks and soil," said Banerdt. "But the signatures of the planet's formation processes can be found only by sensing and studying evidence buried far below the surface. It is InSight's job to study the deep interior of Mars, taking the planet's vital signs – its pulse, temperature and reflexes."
Taking those vital signs will help the InSight science team look back to a time when the rocky planets of the solar system formed. The investigations will depend on three instruments:
A six-sensor seismometer called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) will record seismic waves traveling through the interior structure of the planet. Studying seismic waves will tell scientists what might be creating the waves. (On Mars, scientists suspect that the culprits may be marsquakes or meteorites striking the surface.)
The mission's Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) will burrow deeper than any other scoop, drill or probe on Mars before to gauge how much heat is flowing out of the planet. Its observations will shed light on whether Earth and Mars are made of the same stuff.
Finally, InSight's Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE) experiment will use the lander's radios to assess the wobble of Mars' rotation axis, providing information about the planet's core.
For InSight to do its work, the team needed a landing site that checked off several boxes, because as a three-legged lander – not a rover – InSight will remain wherever it touches down.
"Picking a good landing site on Mars is a lot like picking a good home: It's all about location, location, location," said Tom Hoffman, InSight project manager at JPL. "And for the first time ever, the evaluation for a Mars landing site had to consider what lay below the surface of Mars. We needed not just a safe place to land, but also a workspace that's penetrable by our 16-foot-long (5-meter) heat-flow probe."
The site also needs to be bright enough and warm enough to power the solar cells while keeping its electronics within temperature limits for an entire Martian year (26 Earth months).
So the team focused on a band around the equator, where the lander's solar array would have adequate sunlight to power its systems year-round. Finding an area that would be safe enough for InSight to land and then deploy its solar panels and instruments without obstructions took a little longer.
"The site has to be a low-enough elevation to have sufficient atmosphere above it for a safe landing, because the spacecraft will rely first on atmospheric friction with its heat shield and then on a parachute digging into Mars' tenuous atmosphere for a large portion of its deceleration," said Hoffman. "And after the chute has fallen away and the braking rockets have kicked in for final descent, there needs to be a flat expanse to land on – not too undulating and relatively free of rocks that could tip the tri-legged Mars lander."
Of 22 sites considered, only Elysium Planitia, Isidis Planitia and Valles Marineris met the basic engineering constraints. To grade the three remaining contenders, reconnaissance images from NASA's Mars orbiters were scoured and weather records searched. Eventually, Isidis Planitia and Valles Marineris were ruled out for being too rocky and windy.
That left the 81-mile long, 17-mile-wide (130-kilometer-long, 27-kilometer-wide) landing ellipse on the western edge of a flat, smooth expanse of lava plain.
"If you were a Martian coming to explore Earth's interior like we are exploring Mars' interior, it wouldn't matter if you put down in the middle of Kansas or the beaches of Oahu," said Banerdt. "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. The beauty of this mission is happening below the surface. Elysium Planitia is perfect."
This map shows the single area under continuing evaluation as the InSight mission's Mars landing site, as of a year before the mission's May 2016 launch. The finalist ellipse marked is within the northern portion of flat-lying Elysium Planitia about four degrees north of Mars' equator.
After a 205-day journey that began on May 5, NASA's InSight mission will touch down on Mars on Nov. 26 a little before 3 p.m. EST (12 p.m. PST). Its solar panels will unfurl within a few hours of touchdown. Mission engineers and scientists will take their time assessing their "workspace" prior to deploying SEIS and HP3 on the surface – about three months after landing – and begin the science in earnest.
InSight was the 12th selection in NASA's series of Discovery-class missions. Created in 1992, the Discovery Program sponsors frequent, cost-capped solar system exploration missions with highly focused scientific goals.
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. 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), support the InSight mission. CNES 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.
Quelle: NASA
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Months After Blastoff from Vandenberg, NASA’s Mars Lander Moving Closer to Nov. 26 Touchdown
InSight launched on May 5 and will explore the planet's interior when it lands on the surface later this month
Bruce Banerdt, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory InSight principal investigator, gives remarks during a briefing on the InSight Mars Lander, which launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in May and will land on Mars on Nov. 26. (Bill Ingalls / NASA photo)
NASA's Bruce Banerdt has spent 40 years scheming to get information about the Red Planet’s interior so the next 25 days should fly by.
His answers will come, if all goes well, from the InSight spacecraft — it stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport — set to land on Mars in a few weeks.
The spacecraft launched May 5 aboard the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base and will land at approximately noon PST on Nov. 26 on Mars after journeying millions of miles for the past six months.
“I am stupendously excited to be up here today,” Banerdt, InSight principal investigator, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said last week during a briefing at NASA Headquarters.
“I’ve been dreaming about this mission, this science, for almost 40 years and actively scheming toward it for at least 25 (years),” Banerdt added. “So to get to this point where we’re less than a month away from landing on Mars and actually doing the science is just a real treat for me.”
InSight’s status as Vandenberg’s first interplanetary mission in 60 years isn’t the only Central Coast connection.
Key components, the solar arrays, were crafted by employees at then-Orbital ATK in Goleta. Due to a corporation acquisition, the firm now is part of Northrop Grumman Corp.
During the briefing on the Mars lander’s planned arrival later this month, Banerdt, Tom Hoffman and colleagues sported a big grins.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory InSight project manager Tom Hoffman talks about the InSight Mars Lander’s plans to study the deep interior of Mars to learn how all celestial bodies with rocky surfaces, including Earth and the Moon, formed. The lander’s instruments include a seismometer to detect marsquakes and a probe to monitor the flow of heat in the planet’s subsurface. (Bill Ingalls / NASA photo)
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“I can’t express to you the excitement that I have to stand up here in front you today less than a month to landing,” said Hoffman, InSight project manager at JPL. “I’ve been working on this project for more than seven years and to get to this point we’re on the precipice of landing on Mars, gong to get back some groundbreaking science, is absolutely a tremendous feeling to me.”
Since its departure on an especially foggy morning, InSight has been undergoing engineering and science checkouts while hurtling toward the Red Planet in anticipation of its Nov. 26 landing.
The spacecraft what team members have called a ballistic trajectory toward Mars with a countdown on website showing InSight more than 71 million miles from Earth and 3.7 million miles from Mars.
“We’ve been getting closer every day,” Hoffman said.
The team has made three trajectory correction maneuvers and plans three more before landing, to make sure InSight travels at the right speed and direction to arrive at the proper location at the top of the Martian atmosphere before its planned landing.
On arrival day, InSight will enter the Martian atmosphere while traveling 12,300 miles per hour. In 6 1/2 minutes, InSight will slow to 5 mph just before landing through a complex series of maneuvers.
Approximately 10 weeks after getting safely on the Red Planet's surface and following other milestones, InSight will begin its science, using a seismometer to collect data.
“InSight is going to explore the deep interior of Mars from the crust all the way down to the center of the planet, to its core,” Banerdt said.
The Mars exploration will help scientists learn about other planets, including Earth, in the solar system, he added.
Those eager for InSight's landing are banking on a pair of tiny satellites that tagged along to help ease the angst during InSIght’s final leg to Mars.
Mars Cube One — actually MarCO-A and MarCO-B with each the size of a briefcase — will prove tiny satellites have a role in interstellar space, Hoffman said.
“But we’re really really hoping that one of the other things they’re going to be able to do is give us communications while we’re doing our entry, descent and landing phase,’ he said.
In the past, other spacecraft have provided real-time communication for Mars missions, but those aren’t available for InSight’s arrival, which gives MarCO-A and MarCO-B a chance to help.
“They’ll fly in formation trailing behind us, waiting for us to start giving them a UHF signal and then they’ll be broadcasting that back to Earth so we know what’s exactly happening each step of the entry, descent, landing process,” Hoffman said.
Mars Reconnaissance Observer also will gather data, but can’t relay it live to Earth.
“We’re really hoping they work out as a technology demonstration,” Hoffman said of MarCO craft, adding the MRO will collect the data to send back to Earth three hours after InSight’s landings.
Quelle: Noozhawk
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Update: 15.11.2018
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NASA Brings Mars Landing, First in Six Years, to Viewers Everywhere Nov. 26
NASA's Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet at approximately 3 p.m. EST Nov. 26, and viewers everywhere can watch coverage of the event live on NASA Television, the agency's website and social media platforms.
Launched on May 5, InSight marks NASA's first Mars landing since the Curiosity rover in 2012. The landing will kick off a two-year mission in which InSight will become the first spacecraft to study Mars' deep interior. Its data also will help scientists understand the formation of all rocky worlds, including our own.
InSight is being followed to Mars by two mini-spacecraft comprising NASA’s Mars Cube One (MarCO), the first deep-space mission for CubeSats. If MarCO makes its planned Mars flyby, it will attempt to relay data from InSight as it enters the planet’s atmosphere and lands.
InSight and MarCO flight controllers will monitor the spacecraft's entry, descent and landing from mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where all landing events will take place.
Broadcast Schedule (all times Eastern)
Times and speakers are subject to change. Media can participate in the news conferences by phone. Plus, media and the public can ask questions on social media during the events by tagging them with #askNASA.
Wednesday, Nov. 21
- 1 p.m. – News conference: Mission engineering overview
- 2 p.m. – News conference: Mission science overview
Sunday, Nov. 25
- 1 p.m. – News conference: Final prelanding update
- 4 p.m. – NASA Social: InSight team Q&A
Monday, Nov. 26: Landing Day
- 6 to 10 a.m. – Live interviews with mission experts
- To book an interview, media must contact Mark Petrovich at mark.petrovich@jpl.nasa.gov or 818-393-4359.
- 2 to 3:30 p.m. – Live landing commentary on the NASA TV Public Channel
- An uninterrupted, clean feed from cameras inside JPL Mission Control, with mission audio only, will be available on the NASA TV Media Channel.
- No earlier than 5 p.m. – Post-landing news conference
Public Viewing
About 80 live viewing events for the public to watch the InSight landing will take place around the world. For a complete list of landing event watch parties, visit:
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/timeline/landing/watch-in-person/
For a full list of websites broadcasting InSight landing events, go to:
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/timeline/landing/watch-online/
An InSight landing press kit is available online at:
https://go.nasa.gov/insight_pk
Follow the mission on social media at:
https://twitter.com/NASAInSight
https://facebook.com/NASAInSight
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 17.11.2018
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How NASA Will Know When InSight Touches Down
This image depicts the MarCO CubeSats relaying data from NASA's InSight lander as it enters the Martian atmosphere. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
What's the sound of a touchdown on Mars?
If you're at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it sounds like winning the Super Bowl: cheers, laughter and lots of hollering.
But in the minutes before that, NASA's InSight team will be monitoring the Mars lander's radio signals using a variety of spacecraft - and even radio telescopes here on Earth - to suss out what's happening 91 million miles (146 million km) away.
Because these signals are captured by several spacecraft, they're relayed to Earth in different ways and at different times. That means the mission team may know right away when InSight touches down, or they may have to wait up to several hours.
Here's how NASA will be listening for the next Mars landing on Nov. 26.
Radio Telescopes
As the InSight lander descends into Mars' atmosphere, it will broadcast simple radio signals called "tones" back to Earth. Engineers will be tuning in from two locations: the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy's facility at Effelsberg, Germany. Their results will be relayed to Mission Control at JPL and engineers at Lockheed Martin Space in Denver.
These tones don't reveal much information, but radio engineers can interpret them to track key events during InSight's entry, descent and landing (EDL). For example, when InSight deploys its parachute, a shift in velocity changes the frequency of the signal. This is caused by what's called the Doppler effect, which is the same thing that occurs when you hear a siren change in pitch as an ambulance goes by. Looking for signals like these will allow the team to know how InSight's EDL is progressing.
Mars Cube One (MarCO)
Two briefcase-sized spacecraft are flying behind InSight and will attempt to relay its signals to Earth. Belonging to a class of spacecraft called CubeSats, the MarCOs are being tested as a way for future missions to send home data during EDL.
The MarCOs are experimental technology. But if they work as they should, the pair will transmit the whole story of EDL as it's unfolding. That might include an image from InSight of the Martian surface right after the lander touches down.
InSight
After it touches down, InSight will essentially yell, "I made it!" Seven minutes later, the spacecraft says it again - but a little louder and clearer.
The first time, it will communicate with a tone beacon that the radio telescopes will try to detect. The second time, it will send a "beep" from its more powerful X-band antenna, which should now be pointed at Earth. This beep includes slightly more information and is only heard if the spacecraft is in a healthy, functioning state. If NASA's Deep Space Network picks up this beep, it's a good sign that InSight survived landing. Engineers will need to wait until early evening to find out if the lander successfully deployed its solar arrays.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
Besides the MarCO CubeSats, NASA's MRO will be soaring over Mars, recording InSight's data during descent.
MRO will hold on to the data it records during EDL as it disappears over the Martian horizon. When it comes back around from the other side, it will play back that data for engineers to study. By 3 p.m. PST (6 p.m. EST), they should be able to piece together MRO's recording of the landing.
MRO's recording is similar to an airplane's black box, which means that it could also prove important if InSight doesn't successfully touch down.
2001 Mars Odyssey
NASA's longest-lived spacecraft at Mars will also relay data after InSight has touched down. Odyssey will relay the entire history of InSight's descent to Mars, as well as a couple images. It will also relay confirmation that InSight's solar arrays, which are vital to the spacecraft's survival, fully deployed. Engineers will have this data just before 5:30 p.m. PST (8:30 p.m. EST).
Odyssey will also serve as a data relay for InSight during surface operations, along with MRO, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission (MAVEN) and the European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter.
About InSight
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. 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 provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (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 Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (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.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 18.11.2018
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InSight — Studying the 'Inner Space' of Mars
InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is a Mars landerdesigned to give the Red Planet its first thorough checkup since it formed 4.5 billion years ago. It is the first outer space robotic explorer to study in-depth the "inner space" of Mars: its crust, mantle, and core.
Studying Mars' interior structure answers key questions about the early formation of rocky planets in our inner solar system - Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars - more than 4 billion years ago, as well as rocky exoplanets. InSight also measures tectonic activity and meteorite impacts on Mars today.
The lander uses cutting edge instruments, to delve deep beneath the surface and seek the fingerprints of the processes that formed the terrestrial planets. It does so by measuring the planet's "vital signs": its "pulse" (seismology), "temperature" (heat flow), and "reflexes" (precision tracking).
This mission is part of NASA's Discovery Program for highly focused science missions that ask critical questions in solar system science.
Quelle: NASA