Watch InSight's successful landing on Mars: Difference between revisions
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: For more details: [https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/timeline/landing/watch-online/ Watch Online] |
: For more details: [https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/timeline/landing/watch-online/ Watch Online] |
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[[File:NASA-InSightLander-FirstImageFrom Mars-20181126.png|thumb|First image from the Mars Insight lander. The dusty lens cover will be removed - it was there to protect the camera from dust thrown up by the landing itself]]Some points of interest about this mission: |
[[File:NASA-InSightLander-FirstImageFrom Mars-20181126.png|thumb|center|500px|First image from the Mars Insight lander. The dusty lens cover will be removed - it was there to protect the camera from dust thrown up by the landing itself]]Some points of interest about this mission: |
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* For astrobiologists, one particularly interesting thing about this lander is that it is the first one to use a robotic mole. It will drill to a depth of 16 feet (about 5 meters). This is of interest for astrobiology, especially for the search for past life. ExoMars will be able to drill to 2 meters using a different technique and nothing else has been able to drill to anything like this depth. Viking scraped a shallow trench and most just drill mms into rocks. For Insight though it's not an astrobiology mission, it's drilling in order to get a heat profile depending on depth. But it is the first test of robotic mole technology on Mars. The UK [[Beagle 2]] lander was the first and only previous mission to send a small robotic mole to Mars, it landed successfully but sadly wasn't able to open its solar panels and signal back to Earth. |
* For astrobiologists, one particularly interesting thing about this lander is that it is the first one to use a robotic mole. It will drill to a depth of 16 feet (about 5 meters). This is of interest for astrobiology, especially for the search for past life. ExoMars will be able to drill to 2 meters using a different technique and nothing else has been able to drill to anything like this depth. Viking scraped a shallow trench and most just drill mms into rocks. For Insight though it's not an astrobiology mission, it's drilling in order to get a heat profile depending on depth. But it is the first test of robotic mole technology on Mars. The UK [[Beagle 2]] lander was the first and only previous mission to send a small robotic mole to Mars, it landed successfully but sadly wasn't able to open its solar panels and signal back to Earth. |
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