The mission, a lander called InSight that was to listen for tremors on Mars as a way of understanding the planet’s interior, will not launch in March 2016, the agency said today.
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NASA said that mangers have suspended the launch because of an air leak in one of two prime instruments on Tuesday.
Stay operation of private school buses as public transport, HC told
“For auto commuters who do not know anything about buses and Metro routes, we have shared all this data with twitter”. The Metro will run on peak frequency on the day. “At present, there are over 2,000 trips of Metro throughout the day”.
Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the spacecraft, had already shipped InSight to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where it was to be launched on an Atlas 5 rocket.
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“We’re close enough to launch but unfortunately we don’t have enough time to try to identify the leak, fix it and recover and still make it to the launch pad in March”, said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s science mission chief.
While the InSight mission was meant to be focused on scientific study, the data gathered by the lander would have undoubtedly helped provide NASA with information that could be used to help plan for infrastructure that will probably be established before humans even set foot on the ground.
The leaked instrument is identified as seismometer which belongs to French Space Agency, NBC News reported.
If InSight makes it to Mars as planned, the lander will drill into the surface to monitor seismic activity.
The relative positions of Earth and Mars are such that they are most favorable for launching missions between the two planets for only a few weeks every 26 months. If not ultimately cancelled, the InSight mission would be delayed until at least 2018, which would be the next launch opportunity for any craft heading to Mars. The ideal 2016 launch window is between March 4 and 30th.
The SEIS has to be vacuum sealed around its three key sensors to survive the harsh Martian environment.
Over the next couple of months, NASA will assess options for repairing the faulty instrument, a sensitive seismometer that was provided by the French space agency, CNES. It would have been the first mission to the planet since the Curiosity rover landed in 2012.
NASA has put its next Mars mission on hold indefinitely because of a leaky instrument.
A small leak in the sphere discovered earlier this year was repaired and the team was hopeful the most recent fix also would be successful.
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“I really look forward to the time when we have a seismographic station on Mars and we learn about this marvelous planet and what’s inside”, he told reporters. Mission Control gives you the chance to program and remotely drive a simulated Mars rover, complete with the time delay caused by the signal transit time between Earth and Mars. NASA and CNES officials announced earlier this month that SEIS’ vacuum container was leaking – an issue that was traced to a defective weld.
