Watch InSight's successful landing on Mars: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Watch InSight's successful landing on Mars (edit)
Revision as of 13:26, 26 November 2018
, 5 years agono edit summary
No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
Line 14:
[[Image:Insight Landing ellipse.jpeg|thumb|center|400px|Landing ellipse in Elysium Planitia, Mars Odyssey orbiter image, NASA/JPL-Caltech]]
* [https://earthsky.org/space/how-nasa-will-know-when-insight-touches-down How will NASA know when InSight touches down?] - this also mentions an interesting first - first mission to Mars that will deploy cubesats into Mars orbit. They can relay back themselves and they can also maybe even take a photograph of the lander on the surface immediately after a successful landing (or of the crash site if it crashes, to help them figure out what happened). First interplanetary cube sats
The Marsco cubesats actually were sent to Mars on their own independent trajectories using tiny thrusters for course corrections. The big antenna is used to communicate back to Earth, a design that lets them focus the signal with a flat antenna. There is a small receiver to receive signals from Insight in the base of the satellite that deploys on springs. They communicate independently back to Earth too, the cubesats could fly to Mars by themselves so are true interplanetary cube sats. They are each about the size of a large briefcase and they are technology demonstrators. If they are successful then we may get direct transmission back to Earth of the Entry, Descent and Landing, which would arrive about three hours earlier than the signal relayed from its orbiters which will record it and then retransmit. ▼
* [https://www.universetoday.com/140455/mars-insight-lands-on-november-26th-heres-where-its-going-to-touch-down/ Mars InSight Lands on November 26th. Here’s where it’s going to touch down] shows the landing site on a Mars global map. Also explains more about how the selected the site in order to have solar power they needed to be in the equatorial regions.
Line 21 ⟶ 20:
* [https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/mars-cube-one-cubesat-launch-with-mars-insight/ Mars-bound CubeSats Launch With NASA’s InSight] lots of details about the cube sats - size, statistics, phtograph of a deployed cube sat on a bench etc.
[[Image:Insight-Mars Cube One.jpeg|thumb|center|400px|Mars Cube One shows the antenna array and the two solar panels to either side. It also has wide and narrow-field cameras, and a star tracker, and it can relay data back at one kilobyte /sec to Earth (so one megabyte would take 16 2/3 minutes to transmit). NASA-JPL]]
▲The
* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46332684 InSight Diary: The silence of space] - exceedingly sensitive seismometers, so senstivie they couldn't find anywhere on Earth quiet enough to test them, when the tested them deep in a mine in the Black forest in Germany the strongest signal was from the sea, hundreds of miles away - which would be far stronger than any feeble Mars quakes. They could only really test them once they were in flight on the way to Mars.
* [https://www.drewexmachina.com/2018/11/21/viking-the-first-seismometers-on-mars/ The Viking Seismometers] - how both Viking missions carried seismometers but they were only able to measure really major quakes. Viking 1 was not able to uncage its seismometer. The Viking 2 one did uncage but only spotted wind data apart from one signal that may have been a Mars quake. Showed that with 95% confidence, Mars is less active than Earth.
| |||
