Mission type Mars lander Website insight.jpl.nasa.gov Launch mass 360 kg (794 lb) | Operator NASA / JPL Mission duration Planned: 2 years Launch date 5 May 2018 | |
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Names Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport
Geophysical Monitoring Station Manufacturer Lockheed Martin Space Systems Similar MAVEN, 2001 Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander, Mars Observer | ||
Insight mission animation of spacecraft
InSight is a robotic Mars lander manufactured in the 2010s which was originally planned for launch in March 2016. The name is a backronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. 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, launch was rescheduled for 5 May 2018.
Contents
- Insight mission animation of spacecraft
- History
- Status
- Objectives
- Design
- Specifications
- Scientific payload
- Launch
- Planned landing site
- Team and participation
- References
The mission's objective is to place a stationary lander equipped with a seismometer and heat transfer probe on the surface of Mars to study its early geological evolution. This would bring new understanding of the Solar System's terrestrial planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars — and 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 factory in Colorado. NASA officials decided in March 2016 to spend an estimated US$150 million to delay launch of InSight to May 2018.
History
InSight was initially known as GEMS (Geophysical Monitoring Station), but its name was changed in early 2012 at the request of NASA. Out of 28 proposals from 2010, it was one of the three Discovery Program finalists receiving US$3 million in May 2011 to develop a detailed concept study. In August 2012, InSight was selected for development and launch. Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) with participation from scientists from several countries, the mission is cost-capped at US$425 million, not including launch vehicle funding.
NASA began construction of the lander on 19 May 2014, with general testing starting in 27 May 2015.
A persistent vacuum leak in the French seismometer known as the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) led NASA to postpone the planned launch in March 2016 to May 2018. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will take over development of the vacuum container for SEIS, with France's space agency, CNES, handling instrument integration and test activities.
Status
The InSight spacecraft has been returned to Lockheed Martin's factory in Colorado for storage, and the Atlas V rocket intended to launch the spacecraft has been reassigned to the WorldView-4 mission.
NASA officials announced on 9 March 2016 that InSight is not planned for cancellation, but would instead be delayed until the 2018 launch window at an estimated cost of US$150 million. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch on 5 May 2018 for a Mars landing on 26 November; the flight plan remains unchanged, and launch will take place aboard an Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been tasked with redesigning and building a new vacuum enclosure for the SEIS instrument, while CNES will conduct instrument integration and testing.
Objectives
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 understanding of this process and, by extension, terrestrial evolution, by measuring the planetary building blocks shaped by 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 on 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. Crust thickness, mantle velocity, core radius and density, and seismic activity should experience a measured accuracy increase on the order 3X to 10X compared to current data.
In terms of fundamental processes shaping planetary formation, 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 small enough to have retained signs of those processes.
Design
The mission further develops design heritage from the 2008 Phoenix Mars Lander. Because InSight is planned to be powered by a photovoltaic system, it would land near the equator to enable a projected lifetime of 2 years (or 1 Mars year).
Specifications
Scientific payload
InSight's science payload will consist of two main instruments:
A camera mounted on the lander's arm can capture black and white images of the instruments on the lander's deck and a 3-D view of the ground where the seismometer and heat flow probe will be placed. It will then be used to help engineers and scientists guide the deployment of the instruments to the ground. With a 45-degree field of view, the camera will also provide a panoramic view of the terrain surrounding the landing site. A second similar camera, with a wide-angle 120-degree field of view lens will be mounted under the edge of the lander's deck and will provide a complementary view of the instrument deployment area.
A color camera was also considered if certain criteria such as the project meeting development deadlines and budgeted funding, but this failed to materialize. An electromagnetic sounder to provide data on crustal thickness, ground water, and on the mantle lithosphere was considered as well. Technology to clean dust off the solar panels was considered for Mars Exploration Rover's development. In the years since their development others have proposed ways of cleaning off panels. The effects of Martian surface dust on solar cells was studied in the 1990s by the Materials Adherence Experiment on Mars Pathfinder. InSight may represent possible piggy-back opportunity for MetNet. It may also be a chance to capitalize on previously funded technology development such as the Urey Mars Organic and Oxidant Detector and Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer.
Launch
The launch is being managed by NASA's Launch Services Program. Originally scheduled for 4 March 2016 on an Atlas V 401 (4 meter fairing/zero (0) solid rocket boosters/single (1) engine Centaur) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA. This would have been the first American interplanetary mission to launch from California. On 22 December 2015, NASA called off the launch of InSight in March 2016 due to the inability of the SEIS instrument to hold a protective vacuum under simulated Martian conditions.
Planned landing site
As InSight's science goals are not related to any particular surface feature of Mars, potential landing sites were chosen on the basis of practicality. Candidate sites needed to be near the equator of Mars to provide sufficient sunlight for the solar panels year round, have a low elevation to allow for sufficient atmospheric braking during EDL, flat, relatively rock-free to reduce the probability of complications during landing, and soft enough terrain to allow the heat flow probe to penetrate well into the ground. An optimal area that meets all these requirements is Elysium Planitia, so all 22 initial potential landing sites were located in this area. The only two other areas on the equator and at low elevation, Isidis Planitia and Valles Marineris, are too rocky. In addition, Valles Marineris has too steep a gradient to allow safe landing.
In September 2013, the initial 22 potential landing sites were narrowed to 4, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will then be used to gain more information on each of the 4 potential sites before a final decision is made. Each site consists of a landing ellipse that measures about 130 km (81 miles) long by 27 km (17 miles) wide.
Team and participation
The InSight science and engineering team includes scientists and engineers from many disciplines, countries and organizations. The science team assigned to InSight includes scientists from institutions in the U.S., France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Mars Exploration Rover project scientist W. Bruce Banerdt is the principal investigator for the InSight mission and the lead scientist for the SEIS instrument. Suzanne Smrekar, whose research focuses on the thermal evolution of planets and who has done extensive testing and development on instruments designed to measure the thermal properties and heat flow on other planets, is the lead for InSight's HP3 instrument. Sami Asmar, an expert in advanced studies using radio waves, is the lead for InSight's RISE investigation. The InSight mission team also includes project manager Tom Hoffman and deputy project manager Henry Stone.