Watch InSight's successful landing on Mars: Difference between revisions

 

: For more details: [https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/timeline/landing/watch-online/ Watch Online]

 

[[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:

==First robotic mole==

* 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. InSight is not an astrobiology mission; it's drilling in order to get a heat profile and learn about heat flows to help study the Mars interior. 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 the last of its solar panels and signal back to Earth. It is pioneering technology that could be useful for future astrobiological missions to Mars, though sadly Mars 2020 won't have a drill able to drill to any significant depth. ExoMars will, to a depth of 2 meters, but using a different method.

==Aim to be dull==

* [http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/11/nasas-insight-mission-picks-perfectly-dull-landing-site NASA's InSight mission picks perfectly dull landing site] - unlike most landers, the aim is to be dull :). They aren't looking for interesting and varied geology or places where there could be past or present day life, indeed, the more typical and boring it is, the better for their mission objective to find out about Mars's interior.

[[Image:Insight Lander.jpeg|thumb|center|500px|"This artist’s concept shows InSight landed safely on the Elysium Planitia region of the Red Planet." NASA/JPL-Caltech]]

==First continuous day/night weather station==

* The lander also has a weather station which will be the first one to operate continuously, both day and night on Mars instead of just a few readings a day. It will record temperature, pressure, and wind direction and speed continuously. The reason is because the seismometer will be affected by all these things, it is so sensitive that it will record even deflections of the surface due to passage over of a pressure variation in the atmosphere. As a side effect this means that we have the first continuous measurements from Mars which may well turn up surprising discoveries.

==Landing site==

* [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.

[[Image:Insight Landing site.jpeg|thumb|center|400px|Landing site - notice how close it is to the equator, NASA/JPL-Caltech]]

[[Image:Insight Landing site 2.jpeg|thumb|center|400px|Landing site again. It lands about 600 km away from [[Curiosity]] in [[Gale crater]], NASA/JPL-Caltech]]

* [https://earthsky.org/space/site-mars-insight-spacecraft-landing Here’s where InSight will touch down on Monday] photo of landing ellipse

[[Image:Insight Landing ellipse.jpeg|thumb|center|400px|Landing ellipse in Elysium Planitia, Mars Odyssey orbiter image, NASA/JPL-Caltech]]

===First interplanetary cubesats===

* [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

[[File:PIA19388-Mars-InSight-MarCO-CubeSats-20150612.jpg|thumb|center|400px|Mars Cube One - the two briefcase sized 'cube sats' which succcessfully relayed back telemetry and also the first image from the surface. They were on a separate trajectory and did a flyby of Mars and then headed off into interplanetary space.]]

* [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 Mars 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.

==Ultrasensitive seismometers==

* [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.

[[Image:Viking mars quake.jpeg|thumb|center|400px|Possible Mars quake from Viking sol 8. If it was, the P and S waves are labeled and 2 and 3 are possible reflections from the bottom of the Mars crust. This is the only previous recording of a possible Mars quake as Viking 1 didn't deploy properly and the Viking 2 one wasn't sensitive enough to detect the quakes InSight hopes to find. NASA-JPL]]