While previous missions to Mars have explored the surface, none have dug deep to get an understanding of the formation and history of the planet itself. Meanwhile, France’s space agency, the Centre National d’Études Spatiales, will focus on SEIS’ sensors as well as integration of those sensors into the container, and the integration of the complete instrument into the lander.
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Nearly a year after its original launch was scrubbed NASA’s Mars InSight mission is getting a second chance.
Getting to other planets is dependent on orbital dynamics, and the next window NASA finds acceptable for landing on Mars is in 2018.
The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, was originally scheduled to launch in March 2016, but NASA delayed the launch indefinitely due to a serious structural problem with one of the probe’s two science instruments.
“Our robotic scientific explorers such as InSight are paving the way toward an ambitious journey to send humans to the Red Planet”, Geoff Yoder, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said the statement. InSight had been scheduled for launch this year, but last December, NASA put off the launch because the leak couldn’t be fixed in time. The instrument redesign and delayed launch date will add $153.8 million to the initial $675 million budget, NASA officials said in a statement.
The tool that malfunctioned – called the SEIS instrument – is created to measure ground movement as small as half of the radius of a hydrogen atom and requires a flawless vacuum seal around its three main sensors in order to resist the Red Planet’s rigid weather, according the statement.
The additional cost will not delay or cancel any current missions, but it means there will be “fewer opportunities for new missions in future years, from fiscal years 2017-2020”, it said. The seismic instrument plays a key role in InSight’s mission to study Mars’ deep interior, where astrobiologists say any life on Mars stands the best chance of surviving.
“Mars is the place” to study seismic activity on another planet, James Green, Planetary Sciences Division director at NASA, told Eos.
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InSight’s primary goal is to help us understand how rocky planets formed and evolved. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will redesign, develop, and qualify the instrument’s evacuated container and the electrical feedthroughs that failed ahead of the first launch attempt.
