The space agency has said they are suspending the March 2016 launch of its InSight mission to Mars because of problems with a scientific instrument.
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NASA managers and French designers of the instrument said Tuesday they must now decide whether the pouch’s vacuum seal needs to be repaired, redesigned or the mission scrapped. A new launch date has yet to be determined as the lander is returned from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to the Lockheed facility in Denver.
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NASA said attempts to fix the leak have failed.
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The InSight lander is created to conduct an in-depth study of Mars’ geology.
Launch opportunities for Mars only occur every two years.
Though clearly disappointed, NASA officials said scrapping the mission won’t affect any other Mars-related missions.
It was also created to measure how much heat is being released from the planet’s subsurface and monitor Mars’s wobble – or variations in its orbit – as it circles the sun.
“Although I have personally been working toward making these measurements on Mars for 25 years, the actual InSight Mission Project has only been underway since about 2009”, he said. The mission will launch during the period March 4 to March 30, 2016, and land on Mars Sept. 28, 2016.
During a test Monday at ultracold temperatures, about minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, a leak was again observed.
InSight’s science payload includes two key instruments: SEIS, provided by CNES, and the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), provided by the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
The $425 million mission was the most recent selection in NASA’s Discovery program, which was meant to be low-priced yet competitive.
“We push the boundaries of space technology with our missions to enable science, but space exploration is unforgiving, and the bottom line is that we re not ready to launch in the 2016 window”, he said in a statement.
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The costs for the InSight mission, including launch and data analysis, are capped at $675 million, up from an initial $425 million, NASA Planetary Sciences Division Director Jim Green told reporters. “It is just a hiccup on our path to getting this kind of science and this kind of understanding of our solar system”.
