Updates InSight mission news and updates

[IronRain]

2 weeks after the landing of curiosity, NASA has selected the next mission to the red planet. InSight. InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) is a NASA Discovery Program mission that will place a single geophysical lander on Mars to study its deep interior. But InSight is more than a Mars mission - it is a terrestrial planet explorer that will address one of the most fundamental issues 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.

By using sophisticated geophysical instruments, InSight will delve deep beneath the surface of Mars, detecting the fingerprints of the processes of terrestrial planet formation, as well as measuring the planet's "vital signs": Its "pulse" (seismology), "temperature" (heat flow probe), and "reflexes" (precision tracking).

The InSight mission will seek to understand the evolutionary formation of rocky planets, including Earth, by investigating the interior structure and processes of Mars. InSight will also investigate the dynamics of Martian tectonic activity and meteorite impacts, which could offer clues about such phenomena on Earth.

The InSight mission is similar in design to the Mars lander that the Phoenix mission used successfully in 2007 to study ground ice near the north pole of Mars. The reuse of this technology, developed and built by Lockheed-Martin Space Systems in Denver, CO, will provide a low-risk path to Mars without the added cost of designing and testing a new system from scratch.

The InSight lander will be equipped with two science instruments that will conduct the first "check-up" of Mars in more than 4.5 billion years, measuring its "pulse", or internal activity; its temperature; and its "reflexes" (the way the planet wobbles when it is pulled by the Sun and its moons). Scientists will be able to interpret this data to understand the planet's history, its interior structure and activity, and the forces that shaped rocky planet formation in the inner solar system.

The science payload is comprised of two instruments: the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), provided by the French Space Agency (CNES), with the participation of 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); and the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), provided by the German Space Agency (DLR). In addition, the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE), led by JPL, will use the spacecraft communication system to provide precise measurements of planetary rotation.

Key dates
Launch: March 8 - March 27, 2016
Landing: September 20, 2016
Surface operations: 720 days / 700 sols
First science return: October 2016
Instrument deployment: 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)
End of Mission: September 18, 2018

Factsheet download (PDF)
Bookmark download (PDF)

http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1208/20insight/

 

[IronRain]

InSight in action:

 

[IronRain]

JPL: New Insight on Mars Expected from New NASA Mission

PASADENA, Calif. - On Aug. 20, NASA announced the selection of InSight, a new Discovery-class mission that will probe Mars at new depths by looking into the deep interior of Mars.

"We are certainly excited, but our veterans on this team know the drill," said Tom Hoffman, project manager for InSight from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Which is fortunate, because one of the great things we'll get to do on Mars is drill below the surface."

Drilling underneath the red Martian topsoil will be courtesy of InSight's HP3, or Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package - one of the four instruments the Mars lander will carry. Made by the German Aerospace Center, or DLR, HP3 will get below Mars' skin by literally pounding it into submission with a 14-inch (35-centimeter), hollowed-out, electromechanically-festooned stake called the Tractor Mole.

"The Tractor Mole has an internal hammer that rises and falls, moving the stake down in the soil and dragging a tether along behind it," said Sue Smrekar, deputy project scientist for InSight from JPL. "We're essentially doing the same thing any Boy or Girl Scout would do on a campout, but we're putting our stake down on Mars."

The German-built mole will descend up to 16 feet (five meters) below the surface, where its temperature sensors will record how much heat is coming from Mars' interior, which reveals the planet's thermal history.

"Getting well below the surface gets us away from the sun's influence and allows us to measure heat coming from the interior," said Smrekar. "InSight is going take heartbeat and vital signs of the Red Planet for an entire Martian year, two Earth years. We are really going to have an opportunity to understand the processes that control the early planetary formation."

InSight stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. The mission is led by W. Bruce Banerdt of JPL. InSight's science team includes U.S. and international co-investigators from universities, industry and government agencies. Along with DLR, the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, is also contributing an instrument to the two-year scientific mission.

InSight builds on spacecraft technology used in NASA's highly successful Phoenix lander mission, which was launched to the Red Planet in 2007 and determined that water ice exists near the surface in the Martian polar regions.

Along with providing an onboard geodetic instrument to determine the planet's rotation axis, plus a robotic arm and two cameras used to deploy and monitor instruments on the Martian surface, JPL performs project management for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Discovery Program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver will build the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

 

[orb]

DLR: NASA selects DLR experiment for InSight mission to Mars

 

[Unstung]

JPL: "NASA Evaluates Four Candidate Sites for 2016 Mars Mission"

"The process of selecting a site for NASA's next landing on Mars, planned for September 2016, has narrowed to four semifinalist sites located close together in the Elysium Planitia region of Mars. The mission known by the acronym InSight will study the Red Planet's interior, rather than surface features, to advance understanding of the processes that formed and shaped the rocky planets of the inner solar system, including Earth. The location of the cluster of semifinalist landing sites for InSight is indicated on this near-global topographic map of Mars, which also indicates landing sites of current and past NASA missions to the surface of Mars. The mission's full name is Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport." [...]​

September 04, 2013

NASA has narrowed to four the number of potential landing sites for the agency's next mission to the surface of Mars, a 2016 lander to study the planet's interior.

The stationary Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander is scheduled to launch in March 2016 and land on Mars six months later. It will touch down at one of four sites selected in August from a field of 22 candidates. All four semi-finalist spots lie near each other on an equatorial plain in an area of Mars called Elysium Planitia.

"We picked four sites that look safest," said geologist Matt Golombek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Golombek is leading the site-selection process for InSight. "They have mostly smooth terrain, few rocks and very little slope."

Scientists will focus two of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter cameras on the semi-finalists in the coming months to gain data they will use to select the best of the four sites well before InSight is launched.

The mission will investigate processes that formed and shaped Mars and will help scientists better understand the evolution of our inner solar system's rocky planets, including Earth. Unlike previous Mars landings, what is on the surface in the area matters little in the choice of a site except for safety considerations.

"This mission's science goals are not related to any specific location on Mars because we're studying the planet as a whole, down to its core," said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at JPL. "Mission safety and survival are what drive our criteria for a landing site."

Each semifinalist site is an ellipse measuring 81 miles (130 kilometers) from east to west and 17 miles (27 kilometers) from north to south. Engineers calculate the spacecraft will have a 99-percent chance of landing within that ellipse, if targeted for the center.

Elysium is one of three areas on Mars that meet two basic engineering constraints for InSight. One requirement is being close enough to the equator for the lander's solar array to have adequate power at all times of the year. Also, the elevation must be low enough to have sufficient atmosphere above the site for a safe landing. The spacecraft will use the atmosphere for deceleration during descent.

All four semifinalist sites, as well as the rest of the 22 candidate sites studied, are in Elysium Planitia. The only other two areas of Mars meeting the requirements of being near the equator at low elevation, Isidis Planitia and Valles Marineris, are too rocky and windy. Valles Marineris also lacks any swath of flat ground large enough for a safe landing.

InSight also needs penetrable ground, so it can deploy a heat-flow probe that will hammer itself 3 yards to 5 yards into the surface to monitor heat coming from the planet's interior. This tool can penetrate through broken-up surface material or soil, but could be foiled by solid bedrock or large rocks.

"For this mission, we needed to look below the surface to evaluate candidate landing sites," Golombek said.

InSight's heat probe must penetrate the ground to the needed depth, so scientists studied Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter images of large rocks near Martian craters formed by asteroid impacts. Impacts excavate rocks from the subsurface, so by looking in the area surrounding craters, the scientists could tell if the subsurface would have probe-blocking rocks lurking beneath the soil surface.

InSight also will deploy a seismometer on the surface and will use its radio for scientific measurements.

JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The French space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, and the German Aerospace Center are contributing instruments to the mission. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is building the spacecraft.

InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, which NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages. InSight's team includes U.S. and international co-investigators from universities, industry and government agencies.

For more information about InSight, visit: http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov . Additional information on the Discovery Program is available at: http://discovery.nasa.gov

SPACE.com: "NASA Studying 4 Landing Site Options for 2016 Mars Missionhttp://www.space.com/22645-nasa-mars-insight-landing-site-options.html"

 

[Unstung]

Both of NASA's planetary science missions to launch in 2016, InSight and OSIRIS-REx, are starting to take shape.

JPL: "Construction to Begin on 2016 NASA Mars Lander"

May 19, 2014

NASA and its international partners now have the go-ahead to begin construction on a new Mars lander, after it completed a successful Mission Critical Design Review on Friday.

[...]

 

[RisingFury]

Mars sure is getting a lot of attention compared to every other planet except Earth. It looks like no launch window goes by without us shooting something towards Mars...

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

BTW note that due to the high inclination parking orbit for the 2016 Mars launch window (try that in TransX - you will find it to be 50+ degrees!), and a crowded launch manifest, the launch of InSight is currently scheduled from Vandenberg AFB instead of Cape Canaveral!

(a similar situation happened for the launch of 2001 Mars Odyssey, however the launch site was later moved from Vandenberg to the Cape)

 

[Unstung]

Mars sure is getting a lot of attention compared to every other planet except Earth. It looks like no launch window goes by without us shooting something towards Mars...

Mars is relatively easy to get to, although some icy moons are now considered potentially more habitable. After Viking found no conclusive evidence of life of Mars, there was a lack of missions to the planet until the 1990s. Nearly all launch windows since then have been used by at least one mission. Most of them have been NASA missions considering that the US gives the most money to its space agency with a planetary science budget that focuses on Mars. InSight was selected from the Discovery Program, however, but it was the only finalist that didn't require plutonium. NASA seems to have forgotten about Venus and many other fascinating nearby destinations that are close enough to use solar power. Even solar panels can be used at Jupiter nowadays, with four moons that are unique worlds in their own right, not to mention all the Trojan asteroids.

That turned into a rant.

 

[ISProgram]

NASA seems to have forgotten about Venus and many other fascinating nearby destinations that are close enough to use solar power. Even solar panels can be used at Jupiter nowadays, with four moons that are unique worlds in their own right, not to mention all the Trojan asteroids.

That turned into a rant.

Yes, it did. But rants are okay as long as they are correct. :lol:

Now, as for that "fascinating world", I'm assuming you've seen this, and know that the Discovery program mission selection is due later this year. In which case, keep your hopes up.

 

[Unstung]

This thing is still a thing. (Am I ever enthusiastic about InSight.)

JPL: "Next NASA Mars Mission Reaches Milestone"

NASA's InSight mission has begun the assembly, test and launch operations (ATLO) phase of its development, on track for a March 2016 launch to Mars.

The lander, its aeroshell and cruise stage are being assembled by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.

"Reaching this stage that we call ATLO is a critical milestone," said InSight Project Manager Tom Hoffman at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "This is a very satisfying point of the mission as we transition from many teams working on their individual elements to integrating these elements into a functioning system. The subsystems are coming from all over the globe, and the ATLO team works to integrate them into the flight vehicle. We will then move rapidly to rigorous testing when the spacecraft has been assembled, and then to the launch preparations."

Over the next six months, technicians at Lockheed Martin will add subsystems such as avionics, power, telecomm, mechanisms, thermal systems and navigation systems onto the spacecraft. The propulsion system was installed earlier this year on the lander's main structure.

"The InSight mission is a mix of tried-and-true and new-and-exciting. The spacecraft has a lot of heritage from Phoenix and even back to the Viking landers, but the science has never been done before at Mars," said Stu Spath, InSight program manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. "Physically, InSight looks a lot like the Phoenix lander we built, but most of the electronic components are similar to what is currently flying on the MAVEN spacecraft."

[...]

At least it looks cool.

I apologize for my overwhelming bias towards this mission, it's just that NASA wasted its time by hopping over some riskier, but visionary proposals.

 

[Unstung]

It's ironic that I'm the one updating this thread given my distaste for the mission. The news is over a week old, but a favored landing location for InSight has been chosen.

JPL: "Single Site on Mars Advanced for 2016 NASA Lander"

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 within the northern portion of flat-lying Elysium Planitia is centered at about 4.5 degrees north latitude and 136 degrees east longitude.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech​

NASA's next mission to Mars, scheduled to launch one year from today to examine the Red Planet's deep interior and investigate how rocky planets like Earth evolved, now has one specific site under evaluation as the best place to land and deploy its science instruments.

The mission called InSight -- an acronym for "Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport" -- is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The launch period runs from March 4 to March 30, 2016, and will mark the first California launch of an interplanetary mission. Installation of science-instrument hardware onto the spacecraft has begun and a key review has given thumbs up to integration and testing of the mission's component systems from several nations participating in the international project.

The landing-site selection process evaluated four candidate locations selected in 2014. The quartet is within the flat-lying "Elysium Planitia," less than five degrees north of the equator, and all four appear safe for InSight's landing. The single site will continue to be analyzed in coming months for final selection later this year. If unexpected problems with this site are found, one of the others would be imaged and could be selected. The favored site is centered at about four degrees north latitude and 136 degrees east longitude.

"This is wondrous terrain, exactly what we want to land on because it is smooth, flat, with very few rocks in the highest-resolution images," said InSight's site-selection leader, Matt Golombek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Mars orbiters have provided detailed information about the candidate sites, which are mapped as landing ellipses about 81 miles (130 kilometers) west-to-east by about 17 miles (27 kilometers) north-to-south. An ellipse covers the area within which InSight has odds of about 99 percent of landing, if targeted for the ellipse center. Several types of terrain, such as "cratered," "etched" and "smooth" were mapped in each ellipse. The one chosen for final evaluations has highest proportion in the smooth category.

[...]

 

[Unstung]

SpaceNews: :facepalm: or: "Mars InSight Lander Won’t Launch until 2018 — If it Launches at All"

If it isn’t canceled altogether, NASA’s Mars InSight lander will now launch more than two years later than planned, thanks to a balky seismometer, the agency’s top science official told reporters Dec. 22.

“We’re looking at some time in the May 2018 timeframe,” John Gunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for science, said during a Dec. 22 conference call.

InSight was supposed to launch in March, but a series of leaks in a mission-critical instrument, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) provided by the French space agency, CNES, will keep the mission grounded well past a 26-day Mars launch window that opens March 4, Grunsfeld said.

When CNES discovered the latest leak during environmental testing Dec. 21, the French and U.S. space agencies were left with no choice but to suspend the March launch campaign, Grunsfeld told reporters.

Technical concerns aside, InSight could still be canceled for budgetary reasons — a possibility Grunsfeld would not rule out, because InSight is a cost-capped mission in NASA’s Discovery line of competitively selected missions.

[...]

[insert frustration here]

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

SpaceNews: :facepalm: or: "Mars InSight Lander Won’t Launch until 2018 — If it Launches at All"


[insert frustration here]

Well Mars missions getting to the point of missing launch windows isn't new at all (MSL missed the 2009 one by a lot and Spirit/Opportunity were only a month away from slipping past 2003), but you'd think that a Martian seismometer might be an easier instrument to made than those gadgets on Curiosity. Oh well, does happen.... wned:

 

[Unstung]

InSight was likely chosen because it was a safe alternative compared to its competition. Its seismometer initially had a TRL of 6. Now InSight might never fly due to budget constraints. Curiosity is a flagship mission, not Discovery. Dawn is in the Discovery Program and was canceled due to budget and technical issues.

 

[richfororbit]

Insight may not launch? Where is that from exactly? Something up with the 2016 budget or later?

The leak is only a temporary setback.

 

[Unstung]

Insight may not launch? Where is that from exactly? Something up with the 2016 budget or later?

The leak is only a temporary setback.

As I said, budget issues from InSight being in the Discovery Program may lead to its cancellation. Here is a more thorough explanation:

So how might this affect NASA's planetary program? The answer breaks into three parts.

In the short term, there are three immediate steps. The spacecraft will be returned to its manufacturer, Lockheed-Martin for storage. The French space agency, which is supplying the seismometer, will work to fix the problems to enable the possibility of a future launch. And the launch vehicle will need to be stored or assigned to launch another spacecraft.

In the intermediate term, NASA's managers must decide whether to launch the mission 26 months later in 2018 when Mars and Earth again align or cancel the mission. The InSight mission is funded through NASA's Discovery program, which imposes strict cost caps on missions. The costs of storing the spacecraft and then retesting it prior to a later launch very likely will bust those caps. NASA's regulations require a formal review of whether or not to delay the mission or cancel it.

For the longer term, InSight's problems could have two effects on the pace of future Discovery missions. If the mission is cancelled, there are no additional costs associated with it and almost $150M in future InSight costs are avoided. Five proposed missions are currently being evaluated for selection in approximately nine months. NASA's managers have stated that they would like to select two of those missions if they possibly can. If InSight is cancelled, then NASA has additional funds to apply to the next next mission or missions selected next September.

If NASA decides not to cancel InSight, then the space agency will have new costs associated with the storage and later recommissioning of the spacecraft and possibly higher costs for the launch. In addition, the costs of operating the mission will be pushed forward into 2018 to 2020 when the peak funding for the development of the next Discovery missions is required. (NASA can't simply bank the money it would have spent on InSight from 2016 to 2018. That money would either need to be spent on other missions or returned to the general federal budget. The Federal government works on a spend as you go basis.) The likely result is that NASA would be able to select just one new Discovery mission this coming September. One of my correspondents tells me that just last week NASA's manager for its planetary program, Jim Green, said at a scientific conference that he hoped to select two Discovery missions in September unless InSight is delayed.

No matter how you look at it, InSight's problems seem likely to cause NASA to fly one fewer Discovery mission. Either InSight is cancelled or NASA selects just one Discovery mission from the current competition.

Should NASA launch another Mars mission in 2018 or an extra mission to a place less studied? (I am aware of my bias.)

The budget increase Planetary Science received for FY 2016 goes mostly to Europa and keeping existing missions on track.

 

[boogabooga]

So they might chuck a half billion dollars out the window over repair and storage costs?

Great case study here that you don't get 80% of a space program for 80% of the cost, you get 0%.

 

[Urwumpe]

So they might chuck a half billion dollars out the window over repair and storage costs?

Great case study here that you don't get 80% of a space program for 80% of the cost, you get 0%.

"No bucks, no Buck Rogers."

Old rule, never changed.

 

[Lmoy]

Has there ever been a NASA program that didn't run over budget though?

I may have simply forgotten, but I don't recall ever reading about a program that managed to stay within budget. Even if there was, InSight going over budget is the opposite of surprising, given NASA's track record.